


Nearer is My Heart to Thee

by KaedeRavensdale



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Artist Tom, Attempt at suicide, Car Sex, Code: Red, Complete, Emotional Abuse, Erotic Dreams, Gambling, Harry is thirsty, Lost Love, M/M, Non magic AU, Nude Drawings, Poor Tom, Rich Harry, Romance, Semi Public Sex, Spitting contests, Titanic AU, Tragedy, Victorian Era insults, arranged marraiges, non linear, ship wreck, ship wreck salvage, social class tensions, the chapter names are either scene names or songs from the soundtrack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-31 02:09:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10889469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaedeRavensdale/pseuds/KaedeRavensdale
Summary: Harry didn’t stay in his room for very long. Once certain that no one would be around to see him and with his cane in hand he hobbled out onto the deck. Feeling the cold wind on his face as he stared out across the dark waters where his beloved died alongside hundreds of others. Taking his heart with him to the bottom of the sea.“An ocean of memories,” he leaned against the railing, “isn’t it, Tom?”





	1. An Ocean of Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now fully edited.

The depth of the water tinted the glaring LED lights of the submarines a greenish blue, shedding a ghostly glow across the hills and valleys of white sand as they passed over. Surrounding them on all sides, despite it being the height of day up on the surface far above, was an endless expanse of dark blue. The only sounds that could be heard were the whirring of propellers, the muted burbling of thousands of gallons of cold water and the occasional high pitched pulsations of radar.

Fred pressed his face against the small window, squinting into the dark and craning his neck while holding a video camera in one hand. Scanning the horizon for any signs of their mark, grinning from ear to ear all the while.

“It should be just ahead of us now, Georgie!” He turned from the window long enough to throw a grin at his twin before plastering his face back to the class. “Any minute now. Any… Oh blimey, there she is!”

The featureless deep blue parted abruptly before them and the massive hull of the Titanic, the iron corroded and overgrown with algae and barnacles, rose up from the gloom. Haunting testament to the greatest seafaring disaster yet to date.

Fred stuffed the lens of the camera against the window. “Look at that. All that remains of the RMS Titanic, pride of the White Star line, come to rest in the blue abyss after her very long fall.”

“Got any more cheese you want to throw onto that narration, Fred?” His twin smirked at him from the controls of Duncan. “I thought we were here for the Heart of the Ocean, not to film an Oscar-winning documentary.”

“I don’t know Georgie, maybe we're here for both.” He lowered the camera and switched it off, hastily setting it down before picking up the radio receiver. “Veer 2, we’re going over the bow. Do you copy?”

A crackle of static before the affirmative came over the line. The sub rose higher, cresting the bow railing and throwing its ghostly light across the limpid-scoured deck of the luxury liner.

 “2:30 in the morning of April 14, 1912. And to think that it’s been sitting here, undisturbed, for all this time.”

“A good thing it has Fred. We’d need to worry about competition if we weren’t the first here.”

“Very true.”

Dark empty windows gazed blankly out at them, fronds of greenery waving slightly in their wake as they passed.

“Two and a half miles down. Three thousand eight hundred and twenty one meters. Pressure outside: Three and a half tons per square inch. All that stands between us and a two microsecond death are these nine inch thick windows."

“Wicked; gotta love the danger, don’t we?” They both flashed matching roguish grins. “Let’s land it on top of the officer’s quarters and launch Duncan.”

“The sooner the better; I want to get in there and see what there is to see.”

The sub alighted on the roof of the officer’s quarters with a small shudder and a puff of sand. Fred pulled the vision lens down over his eyes and slid his hands into the controls. “Launching now; let’s head down along the hull and see if we can get in through the window.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The little drone dismounted from the front of the sub, its antenna curling up over its orange body like the tail of a shrimp, and motored forwards by the propulsion of two small but powerful fans. It dropped down along the hull of the mighty ship, its cord feeding out gently as it did so, and slipped in through one of the windows.

Shafts of light shattered against the decorative metal grating of the ballroom doors. The water was filled with enough floating particulates to make vision difficult and the pictures turn out grainy despite the quality of the monitors their team was using for the expedition.

“Okay, now what?

“Go through. Head down the stairwell and onto E deck.”

The wooden walls were in a state of utter disrepair, though whether this was from rot or damage sustained when the ship went down was indiscernible. As they passed by the gaping windows of the dining hall the clouded crystal drippings of a tarnished chandelier caught the light.

Inside the ship the ground was scattered with old boots, broken glasses and numerous oblong objects so overgrown with scavenging sea life that they could’ve just as easily been metal rods as human bones.

“Bloody hell.” The broken face of a child’s doll flashed briefly across the monitors. “In all of the excitement over finding the ship and wanting to locate the Heart I almost forgot…”

“Yeah,” George trilled off, “me too.”

A large pale crab waved its claws at them in a close imitation of a New Yorker caught in heavy traffic before swimming away. He pointed at the screen.

“There. In there. Watch the door frame. Watch the-!” He cringed when the dull thunk of the drone’s sides lodging briefly in the door reach them and aimed a glare at his twin. “That’s an expensive piece of equipment Fred!”

“Were fine, George. Look, he’s all right.”

They made it through without a scratch, thankfully. An upturned table came into view, followed by a damaged powder table gilded in gold. A long pale fish with a ribbon tail swam sluggishly out of their way, looking unconcerned by the intrusion.

Aside from a colony of more of the rude crabs, the powder table was empty.

“Veer 2, do you see anything?”

“We’re over at the grand piano; the thing’s a mess. Keys all over the floor, but no diamond.”

“Look, Georgie,” Fred pointed vaguely in the direction of the monitors, unable to see them with the view goggles still on his head. “It’s the bedroom.”

“There’s Potter’s bed. It’s where he slept with his fiance.”

“And there’s the bathroom. Looks like someone forgot to turn the tap off before they left; sunk the whole ship they did. Rich bastards.” He grinned broadly under the goggles.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Go back to the right; turn that wardrobe door over. I want to see what’s under it.”

“Sure thing, Georgie.” With a moment’s fumbling Fred managed to unlock the drone’s hands from their docked position and grasped the fallen door with the iron claws. Lifting.

“Steady. Steady, Fred, it might come apart. There we go. There… Yes. Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn!”

The wardrobe door flopped back into the sand with a cloud of silt and when it cleared both twins had to stare in utter confusion for a good few moments before it dawned on them exactly what it was that they were looking at.

“Bloody hell, Georgie. We found it.”

 

 

Sand and water coursed through the wide holes of the blue net as the heavy iron safe, corroded green by a century of salt and sea, was hauled back up into the sunlight and onto the deck with one of the numerous cranes on board.

“You hear that, boys?” George asked, flinging one arm around his twin and the other around Lee as he rushed up to greet them, “that’s the sound of more funding. The sound of celebration. We’ve achieved our first goal, our expedition’s most difficult goal, and now were going to be famous!”

The other members of the expedition had already crowded the safe and yanked the net away. One was already taking a saw to the rusted shut lock. Lee ran off to grab a bottle of champagne as Fred and George bounded up to get a closer look.

Sparks flew. A cork popped. Champagne spurted everywhere and the entire boat cheered.

“Crack her open-.”

“And let’s see-.”

“If we’ve found the ‘Heart’ of matters!”

The door fell with a resonant clang and a tide of rancid water the color of red clay spilled across the deck, bringing with it a couple pieces of ruined paper. Fred and George both knelt, swiftly scooping up mud by the handful. More ruined useless papers. A leather bound portfolio containing who knew what which was handed off to another member of the team to be cleaned and examined.

No Heart of the Ocean.

“Damn it!”

“The same thing happened to Raldo,” Lee put in helpfully. “His career never recovered from it. But don’t worry. There are still plenty of places it could be.”

“You’re right, Lee.” Fred said, though his exuberance had evaporated. “Now we just have to explain that to Granger.”

 

 

“George, Fred, one of you! She’s on the phone and she wants to know how it’s going.” Lee called across the room.

Both twins tore panicked eyes away from the portfolio, in the process of being restored, and made a quick exchange of rock paper scissors. Fred chose paper. George chose rock.

He cursed and ,trembling, took the phone. “Hey, Hermione. Hello. Hi. What are you… Oh, a progress… Yes, well… We found the safe. No. No, it wasn’t but there’s still over a dozen places it could-.”

“Uh, Georgie, you’ll want to look at this.”

He glanced up and almost dropped the phone. “Never mind; we might’ve found something after all. I’ll call you back.” He left phone hanging from its chord and rushed over, nearly bowling over Michael Corner who had been in the process of removing the silt and sand which had gathered in a thick layer across the portrait that had been uncovered.

A young man lain luxuriously out of a fine couch, a pouty expression on his cherubic porcelain face; a vision of Poseidon himself wearing absolutely nothing but the cold air and a necklace which looked suspiciously like the one that they were hoping to find.

“Cho, let me see that picture again.” She handed it to him immediately and he held it up beside the drawing. His eyes widened. “Shite, it’s a dead match. That’s the Heart of the Ocean he’s wearing. Is this… Potter?”

“Might be.” Fred pointed to the bottom of the page. “Look at the date.”

“April 14, 1912. This was done the night the ship sank. Records say that Potter was among the dead; the necklace might have been on him. If that’s the case our job just got a whole bleeding hell of a lot harder.”

 

 

It wasn’t a large home and it wasn’t a particularly clean home but it was his home and that was all that he needed it to be. Goldfish swam in a bowl on a small end table. His grandson grumbled at his lapdog, Hedwig, as she danced around his feet begging to be fed. Harry sat reclined in a chair in the warm sun of the closed in porch, cane leaned against the arm and a small smile on his face.

The television played in the background. A news report of some kind though he couldn’t hear the reporter well at all. A ship? They had found a ship? He reached up and turned up the volume on his hearing aids only to have his heart nearly give out from the surprise when he at last caught the name of the ship that they had been discussing.

The Titanic.

 _Dear Lord, nearly a hundred and one is too old for these sorts of shocks!_ He thought exasperatedly, pushing himself back onto his feet with some difficulty and with assistance from his cane hobbling inside to get a better look at the news report. When he saw the portrait being displayed on the small screen of the little TV the blood drained from his face and he nearly toppled over despite the cane, just barely managing to catch himself against the table. “God damn it all to hell!”

“Grandfather,” his 24-year-old grandson poked his head into the room from the kitchen, “is something the matter?”

“No. Nothing is the matter, Albus, dear.” He was quick to assure him. “Help me to the phone. I need to make a call.”

 

 

“Fred! George!” over the whir of the engine of the launching submarines the twins looked up to see Lee running towards them. “Fred! George! There’s a call for you on the collect line.”

“Unfortunate: bad timing.” Fred said. “Hope it’s not Hermione. We’d never hear the end of that one.”

“Tell them to call back, Lee. We’re in the middle of launching-.”

“Trust me,” he said, stone faced as he clasped his friend’s arm, “you want to take this call.”

The twins exchanged half curious half concerned looks and then nodded to each other.

“Hate to miss out on a day of diving-.”

“But I’m sure they can manage without us for one night. Lead the way.”

They followed Lee over to the table where the radio phone had been set up and both pulled on a headset.

“Talk loudly; he’s old.”

“What?”

“ _Old!”_

“Oh. Okay.” They grinned at each other. “Hello Mr.-?”

“Gaunt.” Lee supplied.

“Hello Mr. Gaunt. This is Fred and George Weasley speaking. How can we help you?”

“Weasley?” The voice which came through the line was worn and quavered slightly but was still strong. “You wouldn’t happen to be of any relation to the ‘unsinkable’ Molly Weasley, would you?”

“Great grandsons, why?”

“Just wondering. I was really calling because I would like to know if you’ve _found_ the Heart of the Ocean yet?”

Both look sharply at Lee who smirked. “Told you.”

“You definitely have our attention now, Harry. Can you tell us who the siren in that picture is?”

They could hear the smile in his voice when he spoke again. “Of course I can; it’s simple really. The siren in that picture, as you call him, is me.”

 

 

“Are you kidding me, Weasley!” Draco demanded, following doggedly on George’s heels. “He’s a God damn liar! Some barmy old codger looking for some fame, or else just delusional! Like that Russian tart. Anesthesia.”

“Anastasia, you mean?

Malfoy did not react to his correction. “Harry James Potter died on the Titanic when he was seventeen. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“If he lived, he’d be almost a hundred now!”

“A hundred and one next week.”

“So he’s an _old_ God damn liar! I’ve done my background on him all the way back to the 1920s. He was an actor, George. An _actor_! There’s your first alarm bell! He married some tart whose name isn’t important, had a couple of kids and moved to some now dead town in the middle of the Midwest. His wife is dead too, now.”

“And everyone who knows about the Heart of the Ocean _supposed_ to be either dead or on this boat and until now he wasn’t.”

Malfoy huffed, turned up his nose, and pursue him down the stairs.

The heavy helicopter landed on deck with a clatter of metal; a young man with dark hair leapt down and quickly turned to assist three more with lifting a wheelchair-with man and small white dog still in it-down onto the pavement.

George joined his brother and approached; Draco eyed the massive amount of luggage which had been brought along pointedly. “ _I_ travel lighter than this!”

“Mr. Gaunt, I’m George Weasley. This is my brother Fred Weasley. Welcome the expedition.” He turned to the younger man and repeated his greeting, offering his hand. He took it and they shook. “Albus.” He said. “Thank you. For this, I mean. He never did leave it behind, what happened on that Godforsaken ship. Maybe being here will bring him some peace.”

Malfoy let out a disgruntled yowl when a fish tank was dropped into his hands. Catching Harry’s ill-concealed smirk, Fred and George both grinned. They liked him already. They showed him to his room and helped him to arrange his things into their proper order and, once that was done, Fred asked “is there anything else that we can do for you?”

Harry looked up at him then and Fred had to restrain himself from stumbling back in surprise; his eyes were crystal clear despite his age and glasses and so intensely green that looking at them almost burned.

“Yes,” he said, “I would like to see my drawing.”

 

 

Albus couldn’t believe his eyes and wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to stare at it in horror, stare at it in fascination or look away with his face on fire. His grandfather didn’t seem to notice his confusion, too busy leaning over the edge of the tank to stare longingly at the charcoal drawing.

It was amazing that after so long under the water not even a single line of it had washed away.

“You were beautiful.” He supplied thickly, awkward. He shuffled his feet.

A small, sorrowful smile appeared on Harry’s face. “You should’ve seen the artist.”

Large, warm hands with long fingers; one holding the pad of paper aloft and the other deftly gliding the charcoal along it. A single fox lick of chocolate hair falling between eyes as blue as the ocean they sailed. There was no lust there, nothing cold. They were warm and open, showing only an earnest appreciation for the beauty before him.

“Louis XVI wore a fabulous stone that was called the Blue Diamond of the Crown. Legend has it that around the time that he lost his head the diamond was chopped too. Shaped into one of a kind necklace called the Heart of the Ocean.” Fred said. “It’d be worth more than the Hope Diamond today.”

Harry chuckled. “A dreadful, heavy thing. I only wore it once, but carried it around often enough; it was actually meant for my ‘fiance’.” His expression darkened. “An awful farce that was.”

“I tracked you down through an old claim. One made in total secrecy. If you can tell us who that claimant was then we’ll have all the proof we’ll need to know that you are who you say.”

“I’d have to say it was the Parkinson family; her father if not Pansy herself.”

“That’s right; it was for a diamond necklace which Harry Potter had bought a week before they sailed and given to his fiance, his daughter, aboard the Titanic. Which means it had to have gone down the ship. And since that’s you in that picture there and you’re last one to have been wearing it-.”

George appeared from nowhere on the other side of Harry’s chair and slung an arm around his shoulders “that makes you our new best mate.”

“You want me to help you find the diamond?” Both twins nodded. Harry, ruefully, sighed. “The RMS Titanic was named so for a reason, boys. She’s a big ship. I don’t know how much help I can be.”

“Even an attempt is welcome.”

“That it is, Fred. We’ve even got computer-generated simulations to help orient you.”

“Want to see?”

He grimaced, but nodded. “Very well.”

Albus resumed pushing the chair as they stepped into another room.

“Oh, that reminds me; before we forget again Harry there were other things recovered from your stateroom if you want to see-.”

“No!” Both twins and Draco turned to look at him in surprise. Harry turned his head away. “I don’t. Want to see them. You must understand, I… I hated it. Living like that. From the outside it was the lap of luxury but from within…” He clenched his hands in his lap, the varicose veins standing out in prominent shades of purple against the pale skin. “No matter how much money you have you can’t buy happiness. And you can’t _ever_ put a price on freedom.”

Surprisingly it was Draco who spoke up. “We hadn’t meant to upset you.”

“I know. Don’t concern yourself.” His voice shook slightly as did his hands. “Let's view that simulation, shall we?”

“Of course. George?”

“Up in a moment, Fred.” The monitor blinked on and, with a clatter of keys, an image of a computer-generated model of the ship and an iceberg appeared. “Okay, here we go. She strikes the iceberg on her starboard side and the entire hull is carved open like a Thanksgiving turkey below the waterline. As the water rises it floods the front compartments, spilling over the bulkheads which sadly only reached up to the E deck.”

The model had flooded and now began to sink.

“Now as the bow goes down the stern goes up. It’s slow at first but it gets fast _fast_ and soon enough she’s got her whole arse… Err, sorry, bum, her whole bum sticking straight up in the air. And that’s a big bum. Thirty tons to be exact; should’ve lost some weight over the summer, eh? Anyway, the hull can’t handle the weight and snaps in half to the keel.”

The model really was astoundingly detailed and watching it was near enough to make him sick.

“Once that happens the stern falls back to level but they’re still attached at the keel and the bow is sinking fast. And as it sinks it pulls the stern back vertical before detaching, leaving the stern to bob there like a titan’s buoy for about two to five minutes before it floods and goes under at about 2:20 AM. Two hours and forty minutes after the initial collision.”

And then there’d been the field of debris. The floating. The freezing. Pale skin burned blue. Lapis eyes hazed white with ice. Frozen solid. Frozen open.

He didn’t listen to the rest of what was said or see what the end of the simulation displayed. Harry was too busy trying to rid his mind of the horrible image of what he had looked like after all his warmth had gone to bother.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

He jerked slightly, blinking away the beginnings of tears. “Thank you for that… Fine forensic analysis Mr. Weasley. But the experience of it was… Rather different.”

A drawn out silence in the room before Draco spoke again. “Will you tell us, Harry? About the experience?”

The roguish grin. The supernaturally well-kept hair. Those endless depthless eyes. It would be worth the pain of reliving it just so that he could live and breathe again. At least for as long as the tale lasted.

“I will.” Harry said quietly. “But not until tomorrow. It is late and I’m old; you tire early when you’re old. The story is important to me and I want to do it justice. I’m sure you understand?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take you back to your room, grandfather.”

“Thank you, Albus.”

Harry didn’t stay in his room for very long. Once certain that no one would be around to see him and with his cane in hand he hobbled out onto the deck. Feeling the cold wind on his face as he stared out across the dark waters where his beloved died alongside hundreds of others. Taking his heart with him to the bottom of the sea.

“An ocean of memories,” he leaned against the railing, “isn’t it, Tom?”


	2. A Life So Changed

“It was eighty four years ago, Mr.s Weasley, Mr. Malfoy.”

“That’s all right, mate. You don’t have to remember everything. Just whatever you can tell us.”

Old as he was Harry still had a considerable fire about him, a fact which he proved by throwing a torching glare at George.

“Do you want to hear the story, Mr. Weasley, or would you rather spend the time indulging in a young man’s arrogance?”

“Uh, I think you made him mad, Georgie.”

“I think I might have, Fred. Sorry mate, didn’t mean to offend.”

“They hardly ever do.” The blazing glare made way for the return of the faraway gleam in his too green eyes. “As I was saying it was eighty four years ago, Mr.s Weasley, Mr. Malfoy, but I still remember every moment of the ship. Of the sinking. Of him. It was the RMS Titanic, sister to the Olympic, the unsinkable ship and the pride of the White Star line. Most called it the Ship of Dreams, and to most it was. But to me it was a slave ship and I was the cargo being brought to America, uprooted from everything I’ve ever known, so that my chains could be handed off to a new master.”

_Southampton’s streets were packed to the brim with onlookers there to wave bon voyage to the White Star’s pride on its maiden voyage. So much so that horse-drawn carriages and even the luxury cars of the first-class couldn’t get through without considerable difficulty._

_“Damn pests!” The driver’s voice and the drawn out beeps of the horn which he was lying on were muted considerably by the glass. “Get out of the road!”_

_The carriage of the luxury car smelled like oiled leather and Pansy’s perfume and Harry felt like he was about to die. A headache from the sharp chemical scent of whatever it was his fiance had soaked herself in before leaving the house. A stomach ache from the thought of sailing. Leaving England behind entirely. Forever. He might’ve been heartened by the thought of going to a better life had it not been for the fact that he knew better than that, by now. The upbringing he’d had had rid him of that sort of naivety long ago._

_He was nothing in the eyes of his Aunt and Uncle. Nothing but a means to his own family’s fortune, left to him after his parents had died, and to the Parkinson family’s wealth through marriage. A tool and nothing more. Something they raised and shaped to be perfect for their ends, and cared for only enough to ensure that he’d been an attractive match for whichever line they set their sights on._

_He cow towed to Pansy a lot more than most wives did to their husbands and, scenting his weakness, she capitalized on that fact. ‘Henpecked’ didn’t even begin to describe it._

_Doomed was a much better word._

_“Darling,” Harry had to hold himself back from flinching’s as Pansy attached herself to his arm like a leech. Or lamprey. That was probably be a better comparison given the fact that leeches didn’t live in the ocean. “There’s no need to look so unhappy. Really Harrison. We’re about to go home and start a life together. Marry and have children. I’ll be the envy of all high society for having a **proper** English gentleman on my arm. It will be a happy time.”_

_Most men would find her figure attractive. Would have melted at the softness of her breasts, pressed as they were against his arm in their current position. Harry thought that she was horrifying, though that might’ve been a mild case of Gynophobia talking, and that no matter how much jewelry she put on or how tight and revealing the clothes she wore were it wouldn’t stop her face from looking all smushed in like a pug’s._

_What he craved wasn’t lush lips, soft curves and thin arms. He desired a cut chest, broad shoulders and strong jaw line. He wasn’t normal. He knew that. He was a blight against his family. He knew that too. If he was caught by anyone engaging in such acts with another man he’d be arrested. If he was caught by his family he’d be killed. Slandered. Never found._

_He didn’t want to posthumously tarnish the reputations of the beloved parents that he barely knew by having it come out that they’d birthed a deviant. So he bore it._

_He would never be sexually attracted to a woman, but Harry liked to think that if he met the ‘right’ woman he could fall in love. Have a real family. Be happy for the first time in his life._

_But that was just a fantasy now. That right woman was **not** Pansy Parkinson and never would be. This was an arranged marriage that he had no say in. A selling of him as a slave, now, to the Parkinson’s instead of the Dursleys._

_It didn’t comfort him at all that the going rate had been a couple million. It would all go to Dudley anyway, he felt sure._

_He did his best to keep his dispassion and frustration off his face and out of his voice and offered the most convincingly apologetic smile that he could muster._

_“I’m sorry, my dear. It’s simply that I’ve never traveled by sea before and I’m having… reservations.”_

_Was it normal to have such potent terrible feelings about something that you’d never done before?_

_“There’s no need to be concerned, Mr. Potter.” Harry, having not heard the car door open, jumped and swung his head around to see Lucius Malfoy-patriarch of the Malfoy family who, as a favor to his friend, was watching over his daughter while she was abroad and would be accompanying them to America-staring at him with his steely gray eyes. “The White Star line assures us that the RMS Titanic is unsinkable. Not even God himself could-.”_

_“I’d mind yourself were I you, Mr. Malfoy.” Harry cut in quickly. “God might take that comment as an invitation to try.”_

_He stepped out of the car and then turned back to help Pansy out as well. More out of societal etiquette than any real desire to. A sizable, very vindictive part of him wanted to see her hat be knocked off as she climbed down. Maybe rip some hairpins out on the way._

_She looked up at the boat and, with reluctance still gnawing it is gut, Harry did the same. The blue of the ocean liner’s belly blended well with the water of the bay. His eyes traveled up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up past where the paint transitioned into white. Up to the railing of the decks. Up to the four massive red and black chimneys of the ship which were already belching soot and steam._

_Harry blinked and stared, momentarily incensed. Titanic indeed._

_“I don’t see what the big deal is, Lucius. It doesn’t look any bigger than the Mauritania or any other similar liner.”_

_“It’s over one hundred feet longer than the Mauritania and more luxurious by miles.” Lucius glanced back at Harry with a sly smugness on his face. “Your future wife is very difficult to please, Mr. Potter. I advise you to be careful.”_

_“I’ll take that into consideration, Mr. Malfoy.” The hairs on the back of his neck rose further the more that he looked at him. The unblinking stare reminded him far too much of a hungry serpent to be something with which he was even the least bit comfortable. He cast around for anything which could be of use to distract the other man and sagged in relief when he saw the driver of one of the cars attempting to get his attention. He pointed. “Um…”_

_Lucius turned, annoyed that he’d been forced to acknowledge the other man, and demanded “what?” in a sharp tone._

_“You must check your baggage in the main terminal, Sir. It’s around that way.”_

_“The main terminal?”_

_Yes, Sir.”_

_Lucius pulled out his wallet and shoved a twenty into the man’s hand. “I trust that we can count on you to handle so trivial a matter.”_

_“Yes, of course Sir! Right away!”_

_There was shouting and whistling and the smells of sea and smoke and horses and people and it was all so overwhelming that it made his head spin. It was too much. Too much at once to take in and especially already having a headache as he did._

_As Lucius alerted Pansy, her mother and his Aunt Petunia to the need to hurry aboard Harry was so busy trying not to be sick right there in the street that he didn’t notice his cousin coming up to him until it was too late._

_Dudley’s large meaty hand came down on his shoulder in a bruising grip and swung him around._

_“Hello, Potty.”_

_Wary, Harry straightened up and began walking towards the boarding dock. “What do you want, Dudley?”_

_“Now,” his cousin sneered, pursuing him at a swift waddle, “that’s no way to treat your own blood. Especially when I’m giving you a warning out of the goodness of my heart.”_

_‘Your black heart.’ Harry didn’t reply, wincing when Dudley squeezed his shoulder again._

_“Don’t mess this up. If you do, well, let’s just say there might be a little bit of an accident. And you might end up… swimming.”_

_Screw this up and we’ll push you off the boat? Harry honestly wasn’t surprised. Threats of death and violence, of the sort which could easily be passed of some unfortunate accident, was all but the Dursley’s modus operandi by now._

_Would it really be so bad to die, considering the life that he lived? Harry wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that question._

_“I understand.” Tone blank. Voice robotic._

_Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. To just… Jump off himself. To fall asleep in the cold water. To go home to his parents. The only people who had ever lived that cared about them. To save himself the horror of living empty and unloved in a cage of solid gold._

_Maybe they’d be disappointed with him, knowing that he’d even once entertained such thoughts of wanting to die. Even merely in passing. Maybe they’d be disappointed in him for a lot of things._

_With the gift that would shackle him forever to a life he didn’t want heavy in his pocket, seventeen-year-old Harry James Potter stepped over the Titanic’s threshold with an equally heavy heart._

_Gellert did not look happy, nor did his partner. Even Regulus was glaring at him. Tom adjusted the butt of the lit cigarette between his teeth and sent a sideways glance his friend._

_“What crawled up your ass and bit you, Black?”_

_“You mean aside from the fact that my **idiot** partner bet everything we have between the two of us on a game of bloody poker!”_

_“Watch your mouth. Your ‘idiot partner’ knows what he’s doing. If this is how you are going to react you can find someone else to partner for you next time.” He grumbled under his breath before meeting the cold eyes across from him, a few shades lighter blue than his own, and demanding in rough cut German “you putting down something to match that are not?”_

_Grindlewald didn’t move but his partner, after hesitating for a moment, reached into his pocket and set a pair of folded papers into the pot. Tom reached out to open them enough to read and felt his eyebrows jump into his hair._

_“Bloody hell, these are tickets onto that Leviathan outside. Headed to America.”_

_“What?”_

_“Tickets, Reg. Onto the bleeding Titanic!” He flopped back into his chair, careless of the fact that it nearly tipped over onto the floor. “Let’s make this our last hand then, gentlemen. Winner takes all?”_

_Regulus looked horrified but the Germans both nodded._

_“Well Black, what you have?”_

_“Nothing,” he hissed, “bloody idiot!”_

_“Gellert?” The German sneered at him and folded as well. “Your friend?”_

_The second man smirked and showed his hand. Tom’s shoulders sagged._

_“A pair.” He tossed his burnt to the filter cigarette into the ash tray on the table in front of them. “Sorry, Reg.”_

_“Sorry?” The raven spat, his dark eyes sparking. “Sorry! Thomas Gaunt, I’m going to kill-!”_

_“So sorry that… We’re going to America! Full house!” He threw his cards down, face unfurling into a wicked grin at the same moment that his friend tackled him from the side. “We’re going to have our new start after all! Big Apple here we come! We’re going to America! We’re going to the land of dreams! We’re going to-.”_

_“Miss the boat if you keep blithering!” the barkeep barked. “The Titanic is shoving off in five minutes!”_

**_“Shite!”_ ** _In their haste to untangle from each other and turn around Tom and Regulus nearly knocked over the table. “Come on! Come on! Reg, help me with this!”_

_Tom snatched up the tickets and shoved them between his teeth before snatching up handfuls of the coins they’d won and stuffing them into his pockets and his shirt and his pants. Anywhere he could reach, really, as Regulus did the same._

_“Come on! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!”_

_They bolted out the door and plunged into the sea of people standing outside, waiting to see the Titanic off. Weaving around and in between them. Narrowly avoiding being run over by a horse drawn carriage. The liner’s fog horn shook the ground beneath their feet. Tom pushed himself faster, Regulus struggling to keep up._

_“Come on, Black! I thought you were in shape! I thought you were an athlete! I thought you could keep up! I’m the one who has the tickets, remember!”_

_“Shut up, you ruddy bastard!”_

_“Don’t announce it to the world, Reg! I don’t think that my father would much appreciate you doing that!”_

_Laughing uproariously and vaulting over the gate that two officers were trying to pull over the boarding dock, he bolted towards the ship which just begun to pull away. Waving the tickets wildly about over his head._

_“Jesus, Tom!”_

_“Wait! Wait, dammit! We’re passengers! Wait!”_

_The officer who had been closing the door stopped and looked them over suspiciously. Tom smiled as disarmingly as he was able and held the papers in his hand up for him to see. “A bit late; very sorry. Third class, see?”_

_“Have you gone through boarding inspection?”_

_He nodded hurriedly “’Course.”_

_“Come aboard, then. Hurry up.”_

_Exchanging a grin they leapt the two foot gap between the boarding dock and the door and took off down the hall towards E deck._

_“We’re the luckiest bloody bastards alive Reg, I hope you know that!” With a joyous whoop that echoed off the walls Tom leapt down the stairs, Regulus taking them four at a time in a desperate effort to keep up with his friend._

_“This is what will change everything! A new life, Reg! A better life! This is where it starts; the ship of dreams will take us to the land of dreams and everything will get better from there.”_

_They nearly bowled a woman over, shouting apologies over their shoulders as they continued to run._

_“Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Here, this one.” He pushed the door open and bounded inside; Regulus quickly clambered into the top bunk. Tom turned his attention to the broad set German and his companion to introduce both himself and his friend._

_“Victor.” The first replied after having recovered from the initial shock. “Excuse me, where’s Gellert?”_

_“Not coming. Bet his tickets on a hand of poker. A hand I won. He’ll just have to catch another boat.” He shrugged unapologetically and took a playful swipe at Regulus. “Oi, who said that you could have top bunk Black?”_

_“Oh, the Monet. That can go, um…yes. There is fine.”_

_Pansy wrinkled her nose at the painting Harry held in his hands as Lucius examined another._

_“What’s this one, Harrison?”_

_“Pisao, I think it was. Right, Harrison?” Vernon grunted, his walrus mustache flopping about as he spoke and his enormous stomach straining against the buttons of his waistcoat._

_“Picasso, Uncle. Pablo Picasso.”_

_“He won’t amount to anything.”_

_The raven smiled ruefully and sent the blonde a somewhat helpless look. “Pansy’s taste in fine art and mine are different in the fact that I have some.”_

_“A blind ape has better sense of taste than you! Is this artist of yours high on opium when he paints, because only someone riding the dragon could think a person has a face that looks like **that**!”_

_Harry heaved a long suffering sigh. “It’s abstract, not drug-induced.”_

_“They’ll kindle the fire when we return home.”_

_“No, I-!”_

_“Harrison!”_

_Harry flinched, warning fresh in his mind, and ducked his head. “Of course, darling. Whatever you say.”_

_“Perfect! We’ll get plenty of real art to replace them. Now, darling, we really ought to be getting ready. We have a lunch to be attending soon, after all.”_

_The decks were wide and clean, the sun shone bright and the wind was pleasantly cool as it ran invisible fingers through their hair. Tom took a deep breath of the salty air and an easy smile settled onto his face._

_“Think about it Reg, just over a week from now we’ll be in New York.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and strode calmly forward; he seemed to have gotten most of his earlier excitement out of his system for which Regulus was much relieved. He loved his friend, they’d known each other for most of their lives, but with Tom Gaunt one could never tell what they would get. It was a grab bag most times, and in that bag there were quite a few serpents. “No one will know who we are. No one will care. We won’t have to worry anymore.”_

_Up until the next time he felt threatened enough to make a human sculpture. That was how he phrased it when he came back that night, dead eyed and covered in blood. Carving a human sculpture._

_Tom said that he’d been attacked first, and as much as he wanted to believe him he still found himself wary._

_“Do you think you’ll ever go back to Paris? I know you love that city.”_

_“Maybe.” His shoulders curled forward and for a moment Regulus was ready to curse himself for swinging his companion from manic to depressed, but then Tom suddenly perked up and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, there’s the bow! Come on! Let’s have a look!”_

_And he was back to racing around like a toddler. Regulus shook his head before rushing after him. He was already leaning over the side by the time he caught up._

_“You’re going to get yourself killed, Gaunt!” He grabbed the straps of his friend’s suspenders in an effort to pull him back before he toppled headfirst over the railing, but Tom waved him wildly away._

_“Stop that, Reg! Look!” He pointed. The raven obeyed, if only to stop him from leaning any further. There, faintly visible under the sapphire water, was the gray body of a dolphin racing along ahead of the boat._

_“Ah, Tom!” The brunet had leapt up onto the first rail without warning and flung his arms wide with another joyful shout. “Get down from there, you blazing loon, **before** you fall!”_

_“Kings of the world, that’s what we are now Reg! The Kings of the entire bloody world!”_


	3. Take Her to Sea, Mr. Murdoc

_The luxurious dining room of the first class was filled with bright sunlight and the sounds of clinking silverware and glasses. The table cloths were a crisp blinding unblemished white. The instruments that the men in the orchestra played were polished to a gleam, the wood reflecting different shades of red and brown as the bow slid gracefully across the singing strings. The suits that the they wore were sleek and black and fitted._

_Harry felt like his collar was trying to strangle him. Discreetly as he could, he worked two fingers between its starched form and his neck in an effort to get himself some air, trying his best to focus on what one of the designers was saying._

_“-they must be lit! All of them!” Between his round girth, floppy mustache and all-bluster-all-the-time attitude Mr. Horace Slughorn reminded him quite a great deal of his uncle. Though from what he had seen at least, he seemed to be a much nicer man. He did have an admitted focus on himself and his image._

_“There’s no need, Sir. We’re already at our top cruising speed and our head of the schedule by-.”_

_“I don’t **care** if there is no ‘need’ to Captain! There shouldn’t need to be a need to wait for the need to spread her wings!”_

_“Horace.” The other designer, Albus Dumbledore, was the polar opposite of Slughorn in both looks and personality. He was calmer most certainly, and seemed to be the only one of the two of them who put much of a mind to thinking things through. Tall and thin with twinkling blue eyes and a lion -like mane of ginger hair._

_Though his clothes were a bit of an…eyesore. A neon, bedazzled eyesore. “You should listen to the Captain. We may have designed Titanic and had it built, but with all the years experience as a seaman that he has I believe that he knows best.”_

_“Tosh, Albus! You **will** light all the burners. You **will** push Titanic to her full speed. There will be no further arguments.” Yes, he definitely reminded him of his uncle. “The press need something new to write about; they’ve already marveled at her size and now they will marvel at her speed!”_

_“Isn’t the Titanic only capable of around fifteen knots?” Harry piped up. “The RMS Ertruria was launched in ‘85 and it was capable of nineteen knots; that outstrips Titanic by four.”_

_“Hush now, Harrison!” his aunt’s claw like nails dug into his arm through the thick fabric of his frock coat._

_“No, Petunia, your nephew is correct. Titanic was built for luxury, not speed. Most older liners, those still in service and those scrapped, are capable of outstripping her.” Harry sent a grateful look Lucius’ way but the Malfoy head wasn’t looking at him, glad to have his aunt’s talons off of his arm. “That having been said, fifteen knots is indeed an impressive speed for such a ship and will surely attract the attentions of the press.”_

_Harry softly requested a cigarette from Albus, trying his best to keep his eyes from watering too badly at the sight of his lemon yellow shirt, and smiled in thinks when one was passed to him along with a match._

_“Do we not have a responsibility to our passengers, Horace?” He asked, watching the raven sit back with a smoke and a look of relief on his face with a calm smile. “Is their safety not more important than headlines?”_

_“Their safety isn’t a factor; this ship can’t sink Albus.”_

_“The Titanic is made of iron, Horace. I assure you, she can.”_

**_“Light the bleeding burners!”_ ** _His fists came down and the entire table quaked. The Captain sighed and relented, waving over an officer to convey the orders._

_Vernon seemed very pleased by this turn of events. It had undoubtedly validated him considerably. Marvelous. “Good man, Mr. Slughorn. Good man.”_

_“Harrison!” And the harpy had her talons back on him again. “You know what you have been told about smoking!”_

_“Yes, he does know.” Pansy plucked the cigarette from his mouth and crumbled it out on the ashtray. Harry had to bite back the desire to snap at them both, never mind the fact that Lucius Vernon and Dudley were all smoking, and refused to meet Dumbledore’s now concerned gaze._

_“Are you alright, Mr. Potter?”_

_“He’s fine!” She snapped at him, once more attaching herself to his arm. “Aren’t you, darling?”_

_He mustered up a rictus grin. “Marvelous, my dear.” Harry still hadn’t given her the Heart of the Ocean. He knew that he’d have to eventually, that by stalling he was doing little more than delaying the inevitable. But delaying the inevitable at least served the purpose of making him feel a bit better._

_A waiter materialized from thin air beside them. “What can I get for you?”_

_“We’ll both have the lamb.” Pansy said before he could open his mouth. “You like lamb, don’t you darling?”_

_Molly clucked her tongue from where she sat at another table, looking disapproving. “Are you going to cut his meat for him too, dear?”_

_There was a high pitched ringing in his ears now the source of which he couldn’t even begin to fathom. Horace was speaking with Vernon about the ship; once again bragging about the size. Harry leapt to his feet, pulling himself free of his fiance's grip, and slammed his hands on the table in much the same way that Horace had earlier._

_“Should one have ever read Freudian literature, Mr. Slughorn, they might think that your blatant preoccupation with size is an effort to compensate for something!” The tails of his frock coat snapped sharply behind him as he stormed from the room._

_“Harrison! My word, that boy!”_

_Pansy got up to follow him while the Dursleys simply sat there looking scandalized._

_Tom brushed the flecks of charcoal away from his pad and reached up to push back the loose waves of his dark hair, leaving a streak of grey black across his forehead. He’d been drawing the image of a father and his child standing at the rails for the better part of the past hour and was beyond the point of frustration. His drawing was, by all accounts, good. It captured the image as he’d seen it. But it just wasn’t… right._

_He felt no inspiration, looking at it. No story. No soul._

_It made him want to toss the whole thing overboard._

_Regulus was sitting beside him, carelessly lounging on the hard wooden bench with his limbs tossed about in all directions. By now he was more than familiar with his friend’s wild mood swings and didn’t so much as bat an eye in the direction of the brunet’s near homicidal expression. The sandy haired man smoking nearby, however, seemed incredibly unnerved._

_“What’s his problem?” He asked in a noticeable Irish brogue, unable to handle the discomfort anymore._

_“He’s an artist.” Regulus replied as if that explained everything. “Don’t worry about Gaunt, mate. He’s perfectly harmless. Right up until he’s not.”_

_“That doesn’t make me feel better. At all.”_

_“Give him five, ten minutes. Less, even, if he sees something that catches him. His mood will shift.”_

_“That quickly?”_

_He sighed and sat back, shooting a somewhat guilty glance at Tom to make sure he wasn’t listening too closely even if he knew that his friend didn’t really care. “Yeah. When we were younger Tom was run over by a speeding carriage; he survived, avoided scars somehow, but he wasn’t quite right in the head after that.”_

_“So he’s mental?”_

_“A bit. But he’s not dangerous.” Regulus knew that was a lie, but they wouldn’t be on the RMS Titanic for long enough for that to come out. He hoped. Tom was usually good about keeping his violence under wraps, if not his temper. “Can you tell me anything about the ship, Seamus? We won the tickets in a hand of poker and don’t really know all that much about it aside from the fact that it’s English.”_

_“You don’t even know that, mate, because she’s Irish.” Seamus said. “Built in Ireland. Fifteen hundred Irishmen made it solid as a rock.”_

_Tom paid the two of them little mind, too busy scanning the deck of the stern for anything that might assuage his mood. More of the same tired people leaning against the rails. Young boys kicking a hard rubber ball around, laughing as they went. A towering peacock of a woman walking a small pack of dogs on leashes._

_Seamus scoffed. “Typical that the first class walk their purebred mutts down here to piss and shite.”_

_“Reminds us of our ‘place’.” Tom swung his eyes up to the higher, first class deck. His breath caught in his throat, his heart skipped a beat or two and he almost dropped his pencil. “Hello vision.”_

_Standing there at the rail, poised in black against the cloudless sky like a stately raven, was a young man. He couldn’t make out his features from that distance but could see clearly enough to know that he was beautiful. And to know that he carried heavy demons which tor at his soul._

_“You into blokes, mate?” Tom kept his eyes on the young man and flashed a rude gesture at Seamus. Regulus barked a laugh. “Don’t worry, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t judge. It’s just… I wouldn’t go getting your hopes up. You’d sooner be shiting trumpeting angels than getting close to one of **his** kind.”_

_‘I could’ve been one of his kind.’ What might that of been like, had he been up there on that deck too? Dressed in fine clothes and standing with that stiff poise? A carbon copy of his father in more than just looks. Would it have been worth it, for a clandestine relationship behind the backs of cops and high society wives? To feel his body yield and take him and hear him sing in pleasure?_

_He’d never know._

_“Stay right there, gorgeous. Just a few seconds while I-.” A woman in a low-cut dress grabbed the young man by the arm and spun him around. Snapping something at him. Tom’s teeth were set on edge. “Pug-faced bitch, I was **trying** to draw him.”_

_“Oh boy, boy-oh, I think that ‘until he’s not’ has arrived!”_

_“Tom, mate, calm down! You know better than to go running up there, don’t you?”_

_“Don’t be an idiot, Black! Of course I do!” Grumbling under his breath, he turned to a fresh page and started to sketch. He hated working just from memory, but he’d be damned to let that image go uncaptured._

“I didn’t know he’d seen me at the time. Didn’t know that, from that moment on, mine would be the portrait that his heart was set on capturing. Nor that my portrait would be the last piece of his life.” Wizened fingers ran delicately along the lip of the tank the picture sat in. “I remember how he smiled all through the time it took to draw it. The way that he looked at me. As if I were the most beautiful thing to ever exist in the world. That wasn’t the only time that he looked at me like that…but no matter.”

He shook his head in an effort to clear it, blinking away tears.

“I didn’t meet Tom until that night. After I’d been dragged to one too many stuffy parties. Forced to endure one too many bits of their bladed gossip. Pinned one too many times between my fiance and my ‘oh so loving’ family. It was too much for my then quite delicate sensibilities…I snapped.”

_Harry bolted down the deck of the Titanic with a yell that was more animal than human, mad eyed and with tears streaking his face, his hair even more wild than it had ever been before. The officer that had been walking his way reeled back in alarm when he saw him coming, looking as if he’d seen a ghost or even the Devil himself._

_The raven blew passed without a care for the man, thundering down the set of stairs which led from the higher deck onto the stern. Running straight forwards until he collided with one of the winches, the force bending him over it with a metallic clang that echoed across the abandoned deck like thunder._

_He lay half draped over the winch with his heaving chest pressing into the metal and gasped for air for a few moments before it registered on him exactly where he was. He raised his head._

_The metal railing was white, casting a ghostly vision against the star filled black of night. The sound and smell of the sea reached him from beyond it. Harry straightened up and, slowly, stumbled forwards. Reaching out. Missing the first time but catching hold of it when he tried again. Leaning over. Looking down._

_Down. Down. Down. Down. Culminating in the flat black of the water far below. So far down. So deep. So cold. Gripping the rail, he clambered over it. Bracing himself as he hung there. Still gasping out small sobs as he battled to fight down the last shreds of reluctance. Pressing his forehead to the cold metal and struggling to scrape together the courage to just let go and end it all._

_“Nice night, don’t you think?” Sure or not, Harry nearly lost his grip then and there; didn’t think he’d ever jumped so badly before in his life. His head snapped up and glaring green met inscrutable blue. “Any particular reason that you’re just…hanging out back here?”_

_“Any particular reason?” the man was taller than him by a good half foot at least and leaned his back against the rail close enough for Harry to reach out and touch his arm. He wore a long sleeved white shirt of rough cotton and his dark brown pants were held up by a pair of suspenders in the same color. Third class, then. “Are you bloody daft? What do you **think** I’m trying to do?”_

_The cherry of his cigarette burned a blazing red as the man inhaled, running a hand through his chocolate colored hair. “If I didn’t know any better I would say that you were trying to jump.” Smoke shot from his nose in twin streams, lending him the appearance of a young dragon. “But were that the case you’d have done it by now.”_

_“I **would** have done it by now but the steerage is distracting me!”_

_Pale lips twitched up into a brief sneer. “Go on, then.”_

_“What?”_

_“Jump if you’re going to jump.”_

_“Have you lost your mind?”_

_“I knew that you wouldn’t.”_

_“ **Don’t presume to know me!”** He snarled, looking back towards the water. “I’m going to do it.”_

_“I was hoping that it wouldn’t come to this.” The man heaved a sigh and began loosening his shoes. “I’m Tom, by the way. Tom Gaunt.”_

_“Harrison. Harry. Potter. Not that it matters.” The thick soles of his shoes hit the deck with a loud thunk. He looked over to find Tom struggling with his jacket. “What are you doing?”_

_“Taking off my jacket and shoes. They’ll only get in the way in the water.”_

_“Why would **you** be in the water?”_

_“Because I’ve jumped in after your rich arse.”_

_“And why would you do that? I’m a stranger.”_

_“I’m involved. You jump, I jump.”_

_“That’s the dumbest thing that I have ever heard!”_

_Tom shrugged, tossing his cigarette off the side. It spiraled down for what seemed like an eternity before winking out against the water. That really **was** a long way down. “The world is lacking enough in beauty as it is. I’m not going to let you rob it of more by offing yourself.”_

_“You really think that you can control-!” Harry’s eyes widened, his cheeks coloring from more than just the cold. “Are you saying that…that you think I’m beautiful?”_

_“Does it bloody matter what I think? I’m just the steerage.”_

_“I’m sorry, I…I didn’t mean…I don’t want to be…sweet Jesus you don’t understand what it’s like up there! They’re led around by their Ids! Controlled by their desires! They’re vultures! Wolves! It’s horrible! I can’t take it anymore!”_

_“So their Ids are telling them to be arseholes. And your Id is telling you to…off yourself?”_

_“They’re entirely deaf to their egos!”_

_“And are you deaf to yours as well or has it conspicuously clamed up on this matter?” Harry didn’t answer. “Let me do its job for it then: don’t do it. Don’t jump, Harry.”_

_“I want this.”_

_“You won’t die.”_

_“The fall alone would kill me, I…wait a moment we just had a conversation about Freud!”_

_“I’m uncouth, not uneducated. I am capable of reading and do so often. The workings of the human mind and psyche are two of many subjects which interest me. Physics being another. That fall will not kill you. It isn’t high enough. Not when you’re landing in water.”_

_“It’d be enough to break my bones; I’d drown from being unable to swim.”_

_“Break bones, yes. Probably. Drown? Not likely with the natural buoyancy of salt water.” He said. “At quickest something will come around and rip you apart but that’s not a very attractive way to die if you ask me. Painful, see? Bloody. At longest it’ll take a couple of hours for you to freeze to death. That water’s only a handful of degrees above freezing, after all, if even that.”_

_“I…are…are you really…?”_

_“Yep. I’m not looking forward to going into that water, but like I said before you jump I jump.” He said. “The way I see it, there’s three ways that this is going to happen. You jump and I go after you. You fall and I go after you. Or you take my hand, I pull you back onto solid ground and we both avoid swimming.”_

_Tom’s hand was large, blunt nailed and calloused. His fingers were long and graceful, like a pianists’, and much thinner than his cousin’s flabby paws. Harry hesitated for a moment before lifting his own hand from the rail and taking it._

_He’d never felt callouses before, nor had he ever held a hand so warm as the one which now enclosed his own. Tom really was a handsome man; a sculpted face and square jaw, glossy thick hair, deep blue eyes latticed with flecks of gold and fractals of grey. He smelled like cigarette smoke sweat and coarse soap. Harry’s mouth was suddenly very dry._

_“Come on,” he said, tugging gently on his hand. And suddenly the cold death which had once seemed so appealing became a terrifying thought. All he wanted now was to throw his arms around those broad strong shoulders and bury his face in that wide warm chest. He stepped up to climb back over the rail._

_His foot slipped._

_He plunged from the boat with a scream of terror, Tom swearing brutally as he just barely managed to arrest his fall and nearly went over himself in the process. Harry’s racing heart leapt into his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He felt like he was about to black out from fear. He clawed at Tom with both hands in a desperate effort not to lose his grip, fingers going numb from a mixture of cold and Tom’s iron grip and his knees battering against the metal hull._

_“I’ve got you! Stop flailing, Harrison, you’ll make me lose my grip!” Bracing his feet against the foot of the rail he threw his weight back and heaved the raven up enough to grab him under his arms. “Hold onto me!”_

_Harry didn’t need the extra encouragement to wrap his arms around Tom’s neck with enough force to make his breath hitch. With one last great heave the brunet hauled him back fully over the rail and they collapsed together onto the deck._

_Harry wound up on his back, trembling violently, with Tom on top of him. Supporting himself on his arms to prevent his weight from crushing his much smaller, almost frail looking body. So close that their chests pressed together and they could feel each other’s pounding hearts._

_Tom yelped and recoiled when something struck him in the back of the head. “Get off of him you steerage mutt!”_

_“Pansy!” Harry jumped to his feet and put himself between them, grabbing his fiance by the wrist to prevent her from hitting Tom again with Lucius’ cane. The Malfoy head himself, along with a pair of officers, were just behind her. “Stop! He didn’t attack me; I’d be dead if it weren’t for him!”_

_“Dead, Mr. Potter?”_

_He looked over at Lucius and nodded. “I needed some fresh air so I stepped out and, remembering what Mr. Dumbledore and Mr. Slughorn were talking about earlier, decided that I wanted to get a better look at the…the…” Harry spun his hand around madly in an attempt to elaborate the word which had slipped his mind._

_“The propellers?” Tom hissed incredulously._

_“Yes, thank you Tom. The propellers. But I leaned over too far and the railing was wet and…I slipped.”_

_One of the officers looked over at Tom, who was muttering mutinously under his breath about pugs and rubbing his head where he’d been struck. “Is that how it happened?”_

_Harry sent him a desperate, pleading look. His face contorted somewhat in confusion but he said, slowly, “I’m not clear on what the bleeding fuck he was doing before he went arse over teakettle but I pulled him back up onto deck, yeah.”_

_“Well, then, the boy’s a hero. Well done lad.”_

_“Yes,” Lucius bent to pick up the oblong object Tom had dropped onto the deck in his struggle to pull Harry back up. “A hero indeed. Give the boy something, Harrison; it’s only proper that he be…thanked.”_

_Harry glanced up from being berated by Pansy for ‘cavorting with a Frenchman’ and nodded. “Oh, yes, of course. I don’t know about the rest of the people with whom I associate, Tom, but I don’t believe that one can put a monetary price on human life. Why don’t you accompany us to dinner tomorrow night as my guest instead?”_

_“Thank you, Harrison. I’d be honored to.”_

_“Harry, if you don’t mind. Harrison is much too formal a thing for me to be called by someone who….someone who saved my life.”_

_Tom’s smile was a beautiful thing. Bright. Warm. Just like the rest of him. “Goodnight, Harry.”_

_“Goodnight, Tom.” He walked away, a true smile alighting on his own face for the first time in many years._

_“It really is interesting,” Lucius drawled, “that your state of undress is so advanced if it’s true that Mr. Potter fell so suddenly. As is the presence of this knife.”_

_“The knife fell out of my pocket; it’s useful for everything from cleaning your nails to self-defense. Not that your kind would know anything about that.” He reached for the pocket knife only to have his arm pinned in place by the metal fangs of the other man’s snake-head cane. “Give it back, you  podsnapping meater!”_

_The Malfoy Head didn’t much appreciate being insulted so easily, his eyes taking on an even colder gleam than before. “Since Harrison has gone and embarrassed himself, and us all by consequence, by inviting an animal like you to dinner I hope that you possess the decency to at least appear half-way domesticated!” He threw the pocket knife at him as if it carried a deadly disease and flounced away with a flick of frock coat and long platinum hair._

_Tom slid the well-used blade back into his pocket, fighting down the desire to bury it in the pompous aristocrat’s retreating back._


	4. A Hymn to the Sea

_“A Frenchman! A steerage Frenchman! You really have lost your bloody mind haven’t you Harrison! I cannot believe that you defended him! I cannot believe that you invited him to dine with us!”_

_They had thankfully gotten back to their room before she had started in on him. Horribly stifling as it was most of the time there were rare moments where society’s conventions had their benefits and uses._

_“He saved my life, Pansy. A paltry monetary sum as repayment would have been an insult to that. A fine meal was the least that I could do for him. Or is my life not worth even that to you?”_

_Pansy’s smushed in face scrunched up even more._

_“He’s not around anymore, Harrison, so there’s no need to be afraid of him. If he-.”_

_“I wasn’t attacked, Pansy. Wasn’t assaulted. He certainly didn’t try to rape me. It wasn’t what you think.” Even if sex had been on Tom’s mind it wouldn’t have been rape. After all, rape required one party to be unwilling. And unwilling would be the furthest thing from Harry James Potter if the potential of being deflowered by a man like Tom had been on the table._

_His face was starting to warm and, even worse, he was starting to develop a little bit of a…problem. Luckily that was easily rid of by looking at his fiance._

_The blush, sadly, was more stubborn._

_“You! You’re bright red! You’re a fag, aren’t you!” Fuck. “He didn’t save you and he didn’t attack you, you were going to pay him to bugger you! Weren’t you!”_

_Nothing for it. Unable to suavely talk his way out of matters and in desperate need of a **big** distraction Harry pulled the Heart of the Ocean from his breast pocket and dangled it in front of her. Her gaze focused on the massive diamond-the color of Tom’s eyes, Harry realized dazedly, though without the latticing of other colors-and she jerked back in surprise before reaching for it. Expression shifting into what was no doubt meant to be a coy smile._

_“O-Oh, I…it’s beautiful, Harrison. This is…for me?”_

_“It is. I meant to save it for the engagement announcement at the gala but, well, now seemed a good time.” Thankfully she took no notice of the stiffness of his words, too busy marveling at herself as he cinched the massive stone around her neck. “The Coeur de L’ocean, formerly known as the Diamant Bleu de la Couronne and worn, so legend says, by King Louis XVI. Does this prove to you that my eyes are not straying towards some steerage cur, or need I do more?”_

_“Of course they aren’t, darling! I didn’t believe for a moment you were tasteless enough to want after a vapid penniless no matter how fetching he looked. And never mind the deviance of it!”_

_Here he was with his arms around Pansy’s spindly waist, longing instead for the strength of Tom’s shoulders._

_“It’s late. We ought to change. Retire.” Their room was so big. So well appointed. Harry couldn’t help but wonder what the room that Tom slept in was like. Was it small? Was it crowded? Was it dirty? The Titanic. The Ship of Dreams. The Pinnacle of Luxury._

_He had no illusion that such things extended into third class._

_“Yes, you’re right darling.” Pansy reached up and undid the necklace, handing it back to him. “Do put this in the safe for me, would you?”_

_“Of course.” Harry heard the rustling of fabric as she changed out of her dress and into night clothes. The safe clicked loudly as he manipulated the dial, casting one last look at the diamond before putting it inside and shutting the door._

_He changed too, after that, and turned out the light before climbing into bed. Lying down atop the never before slept in sheets. Staring up at the domed ceiling._

_What would it have been like to lay with Tom? Harry would certainly never know, but he could imagine it well enough. He would be warm, he thought. Warm and strong, but gentle with those large rough hands. Would cradle him. Would hold him close like something precious enough to risk his life to save. He’d rest his head on the muscular contours of Tom’s chest, breathe deep his earthy scent, and fall asleep to the lullaby of his breathing and strong resting heartbeat. Would wake in the morning feeling loved and smelling like him._

_You jump, I jump._

_Harry closed his eyes and darkness poured in. When he opened them again he was staring once more into those depthless eyes, his back pressing into the cold wet deck beneath them as their bare chests fit together, only a thin cage of flesh and bone keeping their hearts from thudding against each other. Their forms lying perfectly atop one another, each divot and curve slotting into place, as if each had been carved for the other by a sculptor’s careful hands._

_Alone. Unclothed. Incredibly hard. A dream. A vision conjured up by urges too long suppressed and his wanting mind. It would hurt nothing to indulge here, in unreality. There would be no evidence to be found. No act committed._

_Not really._

_He reached up with both hands and slid them into his dark brown hair. Pulling the soft strands between his fingers. They felt like the finest spun silk in the world. He pulled him down and crushed their mouths together. Sucking desperately on his lower lip. Nibbling gently on the chapped flesh. Tasting salt and cigarettes. Tom chuckled, a low sound as velveteen as a cat’s purr, and arrested control of the kiss in one languorous motion which spoke to experience. Great experience._

_His tongue, warm and wet, slipped passed his parted lips without resistance. Coaxing Harry’s own into a vigorous dance. Guiding his head back into a better position for plundering his mouth. One hand slid down his chest, flicking brown nipples raised pert by cold and desire, and over the taut shivering skin of his stomach to grasp his hip. The other wrapped long fingers around him with a grip both firm and gentle. Teeth clashed briefly before that sweet hot mouth traveled along his jawline and down his neck. Biting black and blue as he brought him to release._

_Reaching around to lift his legs onto his shoulders and drape them over his back, their mouths fitting back together as the blunt tip pressed against him and-._

_It was then that his mind derailed, unable to conjure up an accurate representation of what would have come next, and he woke sweating and gasping with a dark spot on the front of his pants. Pale morning sunlight spilled through the windows of the room.  
                Harry rushed out of bed and into the shower, half expecting to find hickeys littering his neck and chest like mines across a field of war._

_“Oi, Gaunt, it’s your rich boy again.” Seamus cackled, nudging the other man and pointing towards the higher deck. Tom looked up from his pad of paper and followed Seamus’ gaze; sure enough there was Harry standing at the railing, looking down on the lower deck with those blazing emerald eyes. “What do you think he’s looking for?”_

_“No idea,” Regulus said darkly, “though I doubt he’s come to enjoy the view.”_

_Tom remained silently curious, watching the green eyes find him and that face break into a smile before he rushed for the stairs._

_“Oh bloody hell, he’s coming towards us!”_

_“What do we do?”_

_“Keep quiet; it’s better not to ruffle any feathers when there’s nowhere to run.”_

_Tom flipped the portfolio closed just as the raven trotted to a stop in front of them. “I really hope that you haven’t come to make another attempt at ‘looking at the propellers’ in broad daylight Harry.”_

_Both Regulus and Seamus whipped their heads around to stare at him as if he’d completely lost his mind. Tom ignored them._

_“No, I haven’t. Though I’m sure that you’d catch me again if I had. I jump you jump, after all.”_

_“Come for another rant about how your class is a poor demonstration of humanity according to Freudian theories, then?”_

_“Not that either. Nor am I here for a Physics lecture about falling off of ships, buoyancy and getting devoured by sea life. Though it would be cathartic, I think, to go on another such rant.” The way his face scrunched up was adorable; his glasses ended up skewed sideways on his button nose. “This **ship** is more human than the entire blazing lot of them!”_

_“You really hate your own circle, don’t you?” Between Harry’s evident aggravation and Regulus and Seamus’ absolute shock he had to fight to keep a smile off his face._

_“ **You** try living with them; you’ll see exactly what I mean tonight!” Oh. Right. The dinner. “I came here to thank you, Tom. Properly and verbally, as I won’t be able to do later.”_

_“You don’t want them to know, do you?” Harry shook his head. “Why?”_

_“I have my reasons. You wouldn’t understand. Not you. Not anyone else in the world.” For a moment he looked quite down cast. “Will you take a walk with me, Tom?”_

_“I’d be glad to, gorgeous.” He grinned, wide and feral, when the raven’s face flared a pretty red and his green eyes flashing to the other two. “Don’t mind them darling. Reg is a friend, Seamus I can’t say much for seeing as I just met him yesterday but he’s a nice enough bloke. And unlike your snake pit, no one down here gives a flaming fuck if you’re flaming or who you’re fucking.”_

_“I…flaming…bloody hell, don’t be so presumptuous!” There was definitely something about that comment that made him uncomfortable, if the surreptitious glance he threw at him when he thought he wasn’t looking was any indication._

_“Well then Harry, lead the way.” He gestured for him to walk ahead, portfolio propped snugly under one arm._

_“Yes, of course. This way.” Harry bolted for the stairs._

_Tom looked back at his friend and, if possible, grinned even wider. “Haven’t shitted any angels yet, trumpeting or otherwise, though I will be gone for most of the rest of the day and night. I’ll see the two of you later.”_

_Without waiting for either of them to speak he bounded after the smaller raven._

_They’d spent almost four hours walking around and around the ship by now, had long since passed the point of thanks and had gotten to know each other quite well. He felt rather tired from all of the walking that they’d done but was happier than he had ever been. The sun would be setting soon, as evidenced by the reddening color of the sky._

_“Not a Frenchman.”_

_He blinked, brought back to reality by the dark satin of Tom’s voice, and tried to arrange his face into something that didn’t look quite so…spacy. “Er…what?”_

_“I’m English born but was raised in Paris. I’m not a Frenchman. There’s a difference.” He elaborated. “It seems that my accent is a bit stronger than I thought. That’s why your wife-.”_

_“Fiance.” Harry cut in. “Pansy is my fiance, not my wife.”_

_Tom cocked an eyebrow at the fumbled haste of his interruption but didn’t comment on it. “-thought I was a Frenchman. I’m not.”_

_“I wouldn’t mind even if you were. There’s nothing wrong with Frenchmen. And even if there were you’re a…” that blush returned and he looked away._

_“I’m a what, Harrison?”_

_“Don’t call me that, Tom!”_

_“I’m a what, Harry?” he amended, unfazed._

_The raven sniffed. “You’re a fine bloke, I guess.”_

_“Oh you guess, do you?” Tom’s voice purred directly in his ear and Harry’s mind immediately went back to his dream. To the feel of those lips against his skin. The pressing of that solid chest against his own. “Only fine? Your overly discerning taste offends me.”_

_“You said that you grew up in Paris?”_

_“English born. French raised.  Have lived in England, France, Germany and a small handful of other countries. All briefly. But you’re trying to change the subject, Mr. Potter. Naughty naughty.”_

_There was no way in hell he was going to let them get back onto that track. “I must say, Mr. Gaunt,” he fired back, “you’re very well-traveled for a p-.” Harry bit down on the word at the last moment, eyes wide at the thought of what he’d nearly just done._

_Tom just laughed; the sound was enough to warm him through despite the nippy air. “Go ahead and say it, Harry. A pauper. A poor man. I know what I am, and while I can’t say that I’m proud of it I’m not ashamed either.”_

_Harry looked down at his shoes in shame, not missing the way an older man looked at Tom in disgust. As if he were somehow less human simply for not having as many coins to his name. His companion didn’t seem bothered in the slightest._

_“What do you do? For a living?”_

_“I’ve a couple of skills for rainy days. I’m an artist, you see. I draw, mostly, but I can paint and sculpt and sing too. It’s not exactly lucrative, but I scrape by. And I’m happy doing it, because it’s what I love. And that’s what really matters.”_

_“So that’s what that book you have under your arm is. A portfolio?”_

_Tom nodded. “It was easiest in Paris. Plenty of woman willing to take their clothes off and strike a pose. Never any men, sadly.”_

_“Sadly.”_

_The brunet sent him a playful smirk and Harry instantly felt wary. “Maybe you’d be willing to change that for me?”_

_The raven stared at him in absolute shock. “Are you saying, Tom Gaunt, that you wish to draw me like one of your French girls?”_

_“I am, though you would far exceed even the most gorgeous of my ‘French Girls’. Your portrait would be my masterwork, Harry. The finest to ever be done by my hands, from the moment I commit it to paper to the very moment that I die.” There was such infectious passion in his eyes that Harry almost agreed to it right then and there, but he shook his head and looked away again. “You really are beautiful, you know? I wasn’t lying, Harry. Eyes like yours…”_

_“They were my mother’s.” He replied thickly._

_“I’m not just talking about the color, chéri.” Calloused fingertips turned his chin back to him. “Why?”_

_“Why?”_

_“Why did you want to die? Last night. Surely there must be something in your life worth living for?”_

_He shook his head. “You may be poor, Tom, but you still have a life leagues better than mine. You’re free. I never will be.”_

_Rose was beginning to bleed in over the horizon now._

_“My parents died when I was four years old and left me in the care of my aunt and uncle on my mother’s side. They didn’t want **me** but were all too happy to adopt my money. And to groom me to be married off to get them more.”_

_Tom’s blue eyes became deadly sharp as his hackles rose. “And I thought it was only their woman that they locked in bloody cages! Jesus, Harrison! You never thought to run? It was **your** money, why not leave and take it with you?”_

_“Where would I go, Tom? Where would I go that they wouldn’t find me? Where someone connected to them couldn’t?”_

_“Didn’t your parents have friends? Wouldn’t they help you?”_

_“Things don’t work that way. Not in my world.”_

_“Caged birds don’t sing, so you decided to off yourself thinking that would be better?”_

_The raven shrugged. “Something like that.”_

_“I’ve got news for you Harry, dead birds don’t sing either.”_

_Harry frowned and fished to change the subject yet again. “What about you, Tom? Any family?”_

_“My Mum has been dead nineteen years out of twenty three. It’s just been me and Reg most of the time. And a few others from time to time.”_

_“Any other family?”_

_Harry knew that he’d made a serious mistake the instant that Tom’s expression closed off. “I’d rather not talk about them, if you don’t mind.”_

_“I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to…why are you smirking at me like that?”_

_“You’re panicking, songbird.” How quickly he’d shifted moods left Harry more than a little bit thrown. “Don’t worry about it. Just…don’t mention it again. Let’s just say that conforming to societal conventions leads to unhappiness abound and leave it at that.”_

_“Truer words never spoken, Mr. Gaunt. Quite honestly.” He said. “We’re in agreement that it leads to nothing but a life that’s bang up an elephant shite!”_

_The brunet snorted. “Jesus, even your swearing is highbrow!” An easy silence fell between them before Tom looked at him seriously and asked “do you love her?”_

_Harry jumped. “W-What?”_

_“Your fiance. Pugface, sorry, Pansy. Do you love her?”_

_“What kind of question is that, Mr. Gaunt?” The raven squawked, trying to escape him, only to be pinned against the railing._

_“The kind that wants to know if you’re aware of the fact that ever since this morning you’ve been eyeing me up like a choice cut of meat!” Aware of where they were he kept his voice low. “I wouldn’t mind, you know? Buggering you until you can’t see straight. If you can stand to be touched by the steerage, that is.”_

_Harry pushed him off with a hiss. “You truly are an uncouth presumptuous bastard!”_

_But when he turned to walk away Tom grabbed his wrist. “Wait! I’m sorry, Harry! Please, don’t go!”_

_“And why should I stay when I’ve been so insulted? Subjected to questions which were entirely inappropriate even if they had been your business! Propositioned like some whore!”_

_“Wouldn’t you like to see?”_

_“See?” he snapped._

_“My drawings.” Tom meekly held up his portfolio, suddenly looking put upon and genuinely contrite. “You seemed like you were interested earlier so I thought…”_

_Harry sighed, the rather out of place self-consciousness which had come to rest on Tom’s face softening him considerably as he turned back. “Very well, Mr. Gaunt. Show me the best that you have; though many whom I know may disagree, I like to think I have quite the eye for art.”_

_“Well, let’s take a seat then good sir. Even if it is only my ‘best work’ there’s a lot to go through.” He flopped down on the nearest bench with complete grace and no poise. Much more delicately Harry sat beside him and looked over at the page which Tom had turned to._

_“Queen’s grace, you really **are** quite good.”_

_A woman clad in dark clothes which seemed to have once been fine but had now seen better days held an infant close. She could have been any age at all, it was impossible to tell with her head tilted down and her face obscured by the wide brim of the hat that she wore, but her hands seemed ancient._

_Harry gently turned the page and colored, thumbing through a few of them before saying “you weren’t kidding about woman taking their clothes off were you?”_

_Tom smiled and shook his head._

_“You liked this woman; I can tell because you drew her a number of times. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type to be unsure of which honey pot he wants to stick it in given how strongly you came onto me just now.” He huffed. “You had a love affair with her!”_

_“I favored her hands, songbird. Nothing more. She was a one legged prostitute.” The brunet reached around to turn the page. “See?”_

_“Oh! O-Oh, my!”_

_“Good sense of humor though. And that’s what really matters, isn’t it? Who a person is, not what they do or what they look like.” Harry tried to ignore the faraway look in his eyes as he turned another page. “Ah, and then there was this woman. She was old. Rich. Sad. See how she wears all of her jewelry and her finest clothes. See how they’re all moth eaten?”_

_“I see.” Harry was looking at Tom, not at the drawing. Enraptured by the expressiveness of his face and eyes as he talked. “What does that mean?”_

_“She was at the bar every night, Harry, dressed just like that. Waiting.”_

_“For what?”_

_“The return of her long lost love.” Tom caught him staring before Harry could look away. His grin grew wider. His left canine was cracked. “I called her Madam Beaux.”_

_“That’s…quite tragic actually.”_

_Tom slid closer until their sides pressed together and he leaned over his shoulder, holding the portfolio between them. “It is, isn’t it?” Hot breath raised the hairs along the back of his neck, smelling as if he’d been drinking black coffee and chewing on mint. “But none of these that I’ve shown you are the work that means the most to me.”_

_His chin was resting on his shoulder, digging pleasantly into his collarbone. Those blue, blue eyes were so close to him. Their faces almost touching. If both moved right and at the right moment it would be easy for their lips to ‘accidentally’ brush together._

_“The one that means the most to me isn’t finished yet, and I doubt it ever really will be. You see, my focus was dragged away before I could get his figure quite correct and I do so hate drawing from memory.” Tom flipped the page. “It never turns out quite right when I do.”_

_The image that was revealed was one of a young man in a crisp suit leaning against the rail of the top deck of a great liner, stark against the cloudless sky. Hair waving in the wind. Face without features._

_“I didn’t get a close enough or long enough to look at his features to do them justice at the time, so I didn’t even try. But now…I think I might manage.”_

_The picture…it was him. Even without a face it was unmistakable._

_“I saw a vision of beauty on that day. Tortured beauty. Saw a young man who looked like he’d been carved by angels and was being devoured by demons. Who was clearly suffering. I would have loved to have gotten closer to him but doubted that I ever would…until he ran by the bench I was stargazing on screaming like a bleeding lune and tried to throw himself over the railing of the stern.”_

_Harry sighed, touching the drawing gently and when he received no reprimand ran his fingers over the fine traced lines. His fingers came away smeared with a faint grey sheen._

_“I’ll give it to you, Tom. You see people.”_

_“I do see people.” He agreed. “And I see you, Harry.”_

_“And what do you see?”_

_“You wouldn’t have jumped.” Tom said. “But you will burst, eventually, if you keep forcing down what you really want.”_

_“Anyone ever tell you that you could win a gold medal in the presumption Olympics?” Harry had to admit that he liked how warm Tom felt through their clothing where their bodies pressed together._

_Tom laughed again and Harry reaffirmed the opinion that his laugh was a nice sound. The brunet closed the portfolio and tucked it back under his arm._

_“I do recall a certain someone saying that, yes.” He said, rising back to his feet and offering him his hand. “Let’s get back to walking shall we? We can watch the sun set if we’re quick enough.”_

_Again, he took that hand. Again, Tom helped him up. Again, he marveled at how warm it was. They walked together to the railing and leaned against it, Tom setting his legs shoulder length apart and let his arms cross and fall over the side. Artless, yet dripping grace all the same._

_Harry struggled to mimic his loose carefree posture but his body, after years of stiff poise, rebelled._

_“Ever been to America before, songbird?”_

_“I’ve never been outside of England. You?”_

_Tom shook his head. “No. This will be my first time though I’ve heard a lot about it. Good things mostly, spoken from France to Romania.”_

_“I wish that I could be like you, Tom. That I could just…run off into the sunset whenever I felt like it.”_

_“What’s stopping you? You’ll be in a new country in a few more days. You can come with Reg and I; we’d show you the ropes. Teach you to drink cheap beer and ride horses properly and fend for yourself.”_

_With reluctance a grin had unfurled on Harry’s face. “Teach me to drink like a man, will you?”_

_“And chew tobacco like a man.”_

_“And,” he searched desperately for something to say and blurted out “and spit like a man!”_

_“Ah, so you neglected that course in your highbrow finishing school did you Mr. Potter?”_

_“We didn’t **have** that course at my highbrow finishing school.”_

_“That won’t do. That won’t do at all.” He smirked. “I’ll show you.”_

_“W-what?”_

_“I’ll show you.”_

_“T-Tom, we’re on the high deck; we’ll hit someone!”_

_“And?”_

_“Animal!”_

_The brunet made a show of sighing and took his wrist. “Over here, then.” Despite Harry’s struggles he was dragged to the portion of the high deck which overlooked the water._

_“Watch closely; it’s all about the form.” Before the raven could protest he’d fired over the side. “See the distance on that?”_

_“That’s disgusting!”_

_“Your turn, songbird.”_

_“I will not degrade myself!”_

_“Harry.” Tom tried to pull a serious face but the restrained mirth in his eyes ruined the effect._

_Harry glanced hurriedly around before timidly spitting over the side._

_“Ah, I see now. You’re a lady of high society-ouch! You can certainly slap like a man!”_

_“You deserved it, bastard!”_

_“That was pitiful. **Form** , Harry. Try again. Arch your neck more. Put your shoulders into it. There, that was…better. Still not good though. Like this; watch. You really have to-.”_

_“ **Tom!** ” Harry’s hand closed around his arm and he whirled around, hurriedly swallowing quickly at the sight of the well-dressed woman who had come up behind them. “M-Mrs. Malfoy, Mrs. Goyle, Aunt Petunia. Um…may I introduce Tom Gaunt?”_

_Petunia sneered at him and turned up her nose. Narcissa offered a cold smile._

_“Charmed, I’m sure.”_

_Molly caught his attention and motioned to his chin; he hurriedly wiped the bit of drool on his sleeve, turning red._

_“Do you even know what you’re getting into dear?” she asked him as Harry did his best to keep the attention of the others. “What are you planning on wearing tonight?”_

_Tom glanced briefly at the raven before shrugging. “This. To be honest, Ms., I don’t have any other clothes.”_

_“Poor thing, you’ll be eaten alive.” She told him, shaking her head. “Come with me, I’ve just the thing.”_


	5. An Irish Party in Third Class

_The massive room was dim, patterned in shades of gold and crimson and smelled strongly of expensive perfume. Dressed in a black suit and bow tie and with his dark hair slicked back, Tom stared at himself in the mirror._

_He imagined that he looked like his father. The thought alone was enough to make him want to peel his own face-off._

_“Look at you, dear. You shine up like a new penny. No one looking at you will be able to tell that you don’t belong.” Molly Weasley was a nice enough woman. ‘New money’ one might call her. She’d never been **poor** exactly, not like him, but hadn’t been a part of the high rollers until her husband had stumbled onto a gold mine. Literally. “Seems I was right. You’re about the same size as my oldest son Bill. Feel a little strange?”_

_Tom shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “A little but I’ve been in worse situations; I’m sure that this won’t be too bad by comparison. Harry will make sure I act properly domesticated-to use that Malfoy Prat’s term-while in the presence of my ‘betters’.”_

_“You’re quite a fan of Mr. Potter, aren’t you dear? Don’t think that I’m suggesting anything, love. I just noticed you seem to be very protective of him.”_

_“He’s a bit waifish; have you seen him? Songbird isn’t going to defend **himself**.” Catching her smiling he demanded “what?” While situating his knife comfortably in the inner pocket of his jacket._

_“I know how people fight back in your world, dear. And I know how people fight back in his. It’s not the same. Drawing a knife will just make matters worse. I’m only warning you because he’s treated abominably by his family and I don’t want to see you carted off for coming to his defense.”_

_“I figured that he was; he made some mention of it earlier.” He straightened his lapels. “Are you trying to suggest that I leave my knife?”_

_“You’ll have more than enough cutlery even without it, dear.”_

_“Unfortunately I’ve made too long a habit of keeping it on me. If for the fact that it brings me comfort and nothing else, I’ll be keeping it.”_

_“If you’re certain about it, I won’t stop you.”_

_She seemed genuine enough in her concern, much the same way that Harry did. It was odd._

_Tom sent another sneer at his reflection, already looking forward to the time when he’d be free of the constricting fabric again. “How songbird does it I’ll never understand. These clothes alone are enough to make you crazy.” He tugged on his collar. “I look like a penguin and am of half a mind to be concerned that my collar will slit my throat if I move my head wrong.”_

_“It’s only rarely that that happens; no need to be concerned about that dear. Now, we should be going. We’ll be late if we stay here much longer.”_

_Taking another few moments to bemoan the stuck together state of his usually silken hair, Tom followed her out with a heavy sigh._

_Harrison hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d called the upper crust stifling._

_The glossy wooden railings of the grand staircase were appointed with beautiful sculptures and so highly polished that he could see his reflection in them. The carvings on the ends of the banisters and the face of the clock behind him were more than simply luxurious and the artist in him was desperate for a closer look; had it not been for the general awkwardness of the entire situation he might’ve adhered himself to the nearest carving but he’d rather not embarrass himself in front of the entirety of first class._

_He didn’t want to land his songbird in any additional unneeded trouble for inviting him along. Tom already had the feeling that the pug faced bitch had been giving Harry hell about it and didn’t want to condition the raven to want to avoid him._

_The brunet looked down at the sea of well-dressed vultures, stopping himself from shoving his hands into his pockets at the last possible moment and instead mimicking the posture of the other men that he saw. Pulling one arm behind his back and lifting the other at his side._

_‘Monkey see monkey do.’ He grimaced. ‘I certainly **feel** like a monkey all tarted up like this!’_

_“Thomas, is that you?” He looked up and found a blonde haired woman staring at him in surprise. “Queen’s mercy Mr. Riddle you look-.”_

_“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else!” He bit out, turning his back on her without ceremony and starting down the stairs with the tails of his frock coat snapping behind him. Proper form and matters be damned._

_His mother had always told him before she died that he looked just like his father. He’d hated that. Had prayed, every day, that she was wrong._

_Clearly those prayers hadn’t been heard. Now he could only hope that his father wouldn’t turn out to be on the bloody boat too. He’d never met the bastard and didn’t want to have to endure doing so now._

_Catching sight of Harry grinning at him from beside a wooden pillar, he felt the mask of molten anger melt away into a smile of his own._

_“I have to say, Tom, you wear that suit quite well.” He said, holding out a hand for him to shake. Tom brushed his lips over his knuckles instead with an impish smirk. “I am **not** a woman, Mr. Gaunt, and do not appreciate being treated as one.”_

_Harry hoped that the fact his heart was fluttering didn't show through in his voice. Tom’s amused expression didn’t fade as he gave the raven’s hand a solid shake as well._

_“You look marvelous yourself, songbird.” He said. “Thank you once again for inviting me to dine with you.”_

_“Of course. It was only the least that I could do.”_

_“Quite luxurious, the first class section.” He gestured to the nearest carving. “To work on this ship would’ve been a dream. Sadly such privileges are reserved for master artisans.”_

_“Your skill and talent are incredible, Tom. You’ll get there one day.”_

_The smirk transformed into a true smile. “Thank you, Harry. Your faith in that is certainly encouraging.” He said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the next luxury liner produced, or perhaps the one after that, I’ll be the one commissioned for the carvings or the paintings or the busts.”_

_“Who’s this, darling?” Tom’s face chilled into a business like mask, closing off again though nowhere near as much as it had been when Harry brought up his family earlier that day, as Pansy appeared and grabbed his arm._

_“This, darling,” the word tasted like sawdust, “is Mr. Gaunt. Your remember him, don’t you?”_

_“Oh, this is… I can’t believe that he’s the steerage from the night before. I almost mistook you for one of us.”_

_Tom’s left eye twitched. Harrison shot him an apologetic look from behind his fiance’s back. “Yes. Almost.”_

_“Ms. Parkinson. Mr. Potter.… Gaunt.” Lucius strode up to them, cane in hand, and offered his arm to Pansy. “We’ll be late if we don’t head out now. Come along, Ms. Parkinson; leave your fiance to assist his…guest. We wouldn’t want him loose to embarrass us after all.”_

_“No, Lucius, we wouldn’t want that. Control him, Harrison!” She took his arm and allowed the Malfoy head to lead her away._

_“You really let her treat you like that?”_

_Harry shrugged. “It’s how I was raised, Tom. Given our conversations earlier, are you really so surprised?”_

_“Surprised? No. But I don’t like it either.” Harry looked so downtrodden and alone in that moment that Tom wanted nothing more than to hold him close and never let go. To hide him in that little room that he stayed in with Regulus and the two Germans and smuggle him off the ship to safety once they landed. “Well, shouldn’t we be going?”_

_“Oh, yes. Of course. This way.” Harry gestured towards the decorative grating of the dining hall before leading them to the doors._

_White tablecloths, gleaming cutlery and more polished wood. A sea of people in suits and hats and dresses of all colors. Orchestral music drifted pleasantly through the massive room._

_“See him? That’s Cornelius Fudge. He’s a steel tycoon. And the woman on his arm?”_

_“Wife?”_

_“As if! The wife and kids are at home, as usual. That’s his mistress, Fleur. She’s **my age**.”_

_Tom’s eyes widened. “Bleeding hell.”_

_“I know. It’s really quite distasteful.” That adorable wrinkling of his nose again. “See her?” He pointed to the woman that Tom had seen walking the small pack of dogs along the lower deck the day before. “That’s Madame Maxime. She boarded when we stopped in Cherbourg. Can you guess what she does?”_

_“From your apparent distaste I’d have to guess that it’s something less than reparable. Does she run an opium den or, perhaps, a bordello? Perhaps the ‘Madame’ means a bit more than would be expected?”_

_“You’re closer than you think.” He said. “She sells racy undergarments which are very popular with the ladies.”_

_“That figures.”_

_“I know! They’re so prudish but, Queen’s mercy, once the lights are down… Pansy likes them, Tom! It’s horrible!”_

_“Seen proof of that, have you?” He asked rather sourly._

_“Not yet I haven’t, but I dread the day in which I will.” He moaned. “Here’s the table. Please, sit beside me so that Pansy can’t.”_

_“I’d be glad to, songbird.”_

_“And don’t call me that at the table, Tom!”_

_They settled into their seats-Harry with Tom on one side and Molly on the other-and went mostly unnoticed until Petunia turned her horsey face in their direction and direct a tight lipped smirk at Tom._

_“Tell us, Mr. Gaunt, how the steerage quarters are.”_

_“Marvelous.” Tom shot back with a cold smile to rival a Malfoy’s best; Harry couldn’t help but be impressed. “Cleanest that I’ve ever seen. Hardly any rats.”_

_Slughorn chuckled from his place at the table. “Good show, lad. Most people would be unable to maintain a sense of humor living as you do. With so few means.”_

_“Well, money can’t buy happiness and one can’t put a price on freedom. That’s what I’ve always said.”_

_“Oh-hoh, a surprise again. Words to live by!”_

_“Quite,” Harry smiled at him and raised his crystal glass of wine. “To happiness and freedom.”_

_“To happiness and freedom.” A number of those around the table said it only reluctantly. Luckily the food arrived moments later, sparing them further attention._

_Tom stared at the array of cutlery that was sitting on the tablecloth in front of him as if he’d been confronted by a foreign and indistinguishable language. “Um…”_

_“Just start from outside and work your way in, dear.”_

_He nodded at Molly with a grateful smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Weasley.”_

_Harry watched his reactions to the food with great interest, quite amused by his struggle in locating the proper utensil for the course at hand._

_He should’ve known something would go disastrously wrong, considering his track record._

_“I hate to interrupt the grand time that you seem to be having here, but I must ask what **that** is doing in first class?”_

_Harry whipped his head around, eyes sparking, and came face to face with a carbon copy of Tom though decidedly older and smelling rather strongly of brandy. “ **He** ,” he hissed, rising to his feet despite the protests of his family, “is my guest invited to dine with us in repayment for having saved my life. And I don’t much appreciate you coming over here unasked, Riddle, and-.”_

_“Don’t you have a keeper or something?” Tom snapped, face dark and tone surly._

_Riddle’s eyes, black instead of blue and noticeably bright from drink, focused on him and narrowed. “Excuse me?”_

_“You heard me: I asked if you have a keeper. I’d have expected your parents to have assigned you one, considering the fact that the last time you got shit faced you stuck your dick in the first moving thing you saw!” Collective gasps went up at his rough language. “For all that you knew, and considering it was Little Hangleton, you could’ve been buggering a goat! I bet you wish it **was** a goat, don’t you? Untoward as bestiality is at least then you wouldn’t’ve ended up siring a bastard would you have, **father**?”_

_Harry had never heard such a deafening silence before in his life. Riddle looked like he wanted to wrap his hands around Tom’s throat. The entire room seemed to be staring at them. Tom rose fluidly from his seat, removing his hand from his pocket and knocking a folded paper into the raven’s lap as if by accident, and sneered._

_“Thank you, Harrison, for inviting me but I think I’ve lost my appetite; I’d rather the company of rats then bar flies, you see.”_

_He turned to leave but his father grabbed his wrist, recoiling almost immediately when Tom pivoted like a striking snake. Blood dripped crimson down the edge of the switch blade, Riddle hissing as he clutched his bleeding hand._

_“Don’t touch me!” He snarled, not once pausing in his exit from the room._

_“Worthless, rabid cur! You motherless bastard! Burn in hell! May this ship sink and take you with it!” The brunet turned back long enough to bite his thumb before vanishing through the door. Semi stunned by the now concluded spectacle Harry looked down and unfolded the paper which had been left for him. Tom’s handwriting was as elegant a brand of calligraphy as that of any member of the upper class._

_‘Meet me at 10:00 in front of the clock. You and I will have a bit of fun.’_

_Being forbidden from smoking by his relatives, and thereby unofficially barred from participating in the lounge room culture of the ‘men’, made it incredibly easy for him to slip away without notice in time to meet Tom under the beautifully carved clock which crowned the grand staircase. Hearing his footsteps, the brunet- having changed back  into his normal clothes and freed his now damp curls of the hair gel they’d been pinned with earlier-turned to him and smiled._

_“Well songbird, are you ready to head down to a **real** party?”_

_“Down?” Harry repeated. “As in…?”_

_“Yep. As in down to steerage. Because steerage has more fun.”_

_“You shouldn’t refer to yourself as steerage, Tom. You do realize that that’s an insult, don’t you?”_

_“I don’t let labels bother me, Harry. It’s unproductive. Especially for someone in my position.”_

_“Labels. You mean like…never mind. I promised not to, after all.”_

_“I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m a bastard. Have made my peace.”_

_“Your father… I should’ve realized. I thought you looked a little bit… Familiar.”_

_“More like a lot familiar.”_

_“Have you-?”_

_“No. The first time I ever met him, ever saw him, was tonight. But mother…she’d talk about him all the bloody time.” His expression briefly slid into a mimic of a person who’d discovered something unsavory stuck to the bottom of their shoe. “The sot probably thinks that I’ve hunted him down in an attempt to make a claim on the Riddle name and fortune.”_

_“Maybe you should, Tom.”_

_He snorted. “I don’t want their filthy money or their filthy name. And, no offense songbird, but I’d rather not be dragged into your circle. You see, I rather like my own.” Tom gestured towards the stairs. “It’s a bit of a walk down onto E deck. We should start heading that way.”_

_Harry fell into step beside Tom and followed him through the halls and down a set of stairs. It was immediately evident when they exited first-class and entered into third. The halls became narrower, the artwork and adornments disappeared completely and despite the RMS Titanic being the newest ship in White Star’s fleet there was a certain gloomy dinginess to their surroundings._

_“What’s the matter, songbird?” Tom’s voice brought him out of his musings with a start. “Culture shock?”_

_“Yeah. You could call it that.” Paying no attention to his actions, Harry grabbed the cuff of Tom’s sleeve. Clutching it like a security blanket. “It isn’t fair.”_

_“Not entirely clear on what you’re talking about, but life isn’t fair so whatever it is it’s hardly a surprise to me.” The brunet gently freed Harry’s grip on his sleeve, enclosing his hand in his own instead. The raven’s immediate first reaction was to pull away, but remembering Tom’s earlier comment about no one down there caring forced his body to relax. The taller man grinned and pulled him fully under his arm. “I’m no stranger to it.”_

_“You don’t seem a stranger to me either with the way your hands are wandering!” His large hand had caught a gentle grip on Harry’s hip, arm flung easily over his shoulders like a python. He buried his face in the side of Tom’s chest to hide his blush, soaking up his warmth and breathing in deep lungful of his scent._

_“You don’t seem all that bothered, songbird.”_

_He definitely wasn’t, but letting him know that wouldn’t be proper. Not to mention he’d probably never hear the end of it. “Where are we going?” He did faintly hear the wailing of what sounded like bagpipes echoing up from under the floor._

_“Well, our ultimate goal is the bottom floor where most of the third class is currently dancing up a storm and drinking an entire sea of cheap beer. But we’re going to be stopping by my room first darling.”_

_His room? Oh lord. “Your…w-why?”_

_“So that you can drop this,” he picked at the lapels of his frock coat, “off and blend in a little better. Don’t look panicked. No one is going to run you out, but if they think you’re rich they'll get a little jumpy.”_

_“Why?”_

_“It’s a bad idea to ruffle feathers when you don’t have anywhere to run.” Tom briefly squeezed him tighter and the raven burrowed closer in result. “You’re starved for a bit of contact, aren’t you?” Harry wrapped his arms around his waist, closing his eyes in contentment when long fingers carded through his hair. “Come on, love. We’ll miss all the fun if we stay here.”_

_He didn’t release his hold on him and the brunet didn’t try to make him, carefully guiding him along the narrow hall and through a small doorway. The room where Tom slept was only a little larger than a closet and the four bunk beds which had been crammed into it left barely enough space for them to move._

_“This is…”_

_“All we do in here is sleep, Songbird. We don’t need more space than this.” Tom divested him of the jacket of his suit, leaving him only in slacks and a shirt and suspenders, and dropped it onto his bed. With that done, he gently unbuttoned his collar and let it flop limply back over his shoulders. “Feels odd to be able to move your head, doesn’t it?”_

_Harry smiled at him. “A little bit. Will I blend in now, Tom?”_

_“You’ll blend in until you open your mouth; only the rich can sound that posh.” The raven stuck his tongue out and Tom made a show of pressing a hand to his chest. “My word, good sir, how coarse of you!”_

_“Coarse indeed. As if you care!”_

_“Of course I care. Just not about that.” In such a cramped space they couldn’t even breathe without brushing up against each other and Harry had to fight the urge to fall against that chest while Tom stared at him with something unrecognizable, but not frightening, in his eyes. His lips were slightly parted and his gaze was locked on Harry’s own and for a moment he thought the taller man might leaned down and kiss him. “We should… Be going.”_

_Tom pushed the door of the room open and stepped out into the hall, leaving Harry unsure if he was relieved or disappointed._

_The hot room smelled like sweat, tobacco smoke and cheap beer and was filled from wall-to-wall with people strung in daisy chains between the pillars holding up the ceiling. Talking. Laughing. Blaring music from bagpipes and ukuleles and a handful of other instruments the likes of which were unfamiliar. Harry had never been in such a loud, crowded place before surrounded by so many smiling people and he loved every second of it. His own face stretched into a grin, clapping along to the music as he sat at a small table with Regulus who already appeared to be at least two sheets to the wind. Watching Tom deftly spin a young girl in a white dress to the music._

_“You’re a strange one, Potter. I’ll say that.”_

_“Strange?” He repeated, looking over at the man. Tom’s friend was handsome enough, he supposed, with semi-shaggy black hair and matte ebony eyes. Though he found the brunet leagues more attractive. “How so?”_

_“You’re not the norm. Never thought I’d see a rich boy down here partying with steerage.”_

_“I’m glad not to be the norm, Regulus. The norm can burn in hell; I’m sick to death of the constant bickering and backstabbing. I’d much rather be down here with the lot of you. Down here, in the **real** world.”_

_“Even if you have to give up your gold?”_

_“Money doesn’t buy anything but a cage. This could very well be the first and last night of my life that I’ll ever get to really **live**!” He pushed up his glasses. “Can you blame me for being down here? For being drawn to him? I’ve never met anyone like Tom.”_

_“And you’ll never meet anyone else like me again because this world can’t handle more than one of me; I’m far too marvelous, you see.” Long arms wrapped around his shoulders. “I hope you don’t mind, Reg, that I will be taking my songbird for a spin.”_

_“I don’t mind, no. But I wasn’t the one who was your former dance partner; she looks a little upset, Tom.”_

_Both looked over to find the little girl staring at them. Harry felt somewhat discomfited but Tom just smiled. “You’re still my best girl, Bella. But I brought Harry down here as a guess and need to dance with him at least once, don’t I?” She nodded. “Wouldn’t want to be rude, would I?” She shook her head. “Run along then.”_

_She scampered away into the seething crowd. Tom pulled him up, deaf to his protests, and dragged him in as well. Placing his hand back on his hip and taking one of his hands with the other, he pulled his body flush against him._

_“We’ll need to get a bit closer for this.” The raven was tugged reluctantly into motion. “Come on, Harry. Have a little fun.”_

_“I don’t know the steps! T-Tom, please!”_

_“I don’t think anyone knows the steps, songbird. But that’s what makes it fun: live a little!”_

_The music was reedy, rowdy, and as warm and coarse as Tom himself. The ‘dance’ which accompanied it seemed to be less of a refined series of motions like the waltz or Rondo and more of a wild amalgam of jumping spinning and whirling arms. He’d never smiled so much for so long and was half afraid his face would freeze like that. Tom almost tripped more than once on the feet of those around them. Harry’s glasses nearly flew off during a particularly powerful spin which almost toppled them and the raven could no longer keep from laughing._

_“Beer.” The brunet swiped two glasses full of dark lager on the table atop which two men were arm wrestling, handing one to Harry just as the little piece of furniture buckled and a tide of the cheap alcohol rushed across the floor. “Got to keep hydrated after all. Lots of-Jesus songbird!”_

_Harry smiled angelically, setting his empty glass down on another table. “Did you think I couldn’t drink just because I’m first-class, Tom? Or maybe it’s because I’m rather small?”_

_“Impressive, Harry, I have to say. Though I can’t let you outdo me. I’d never live it down.” He drained his own glass in one and held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s find some more; can’t have a true party without getting properly pissed.”_

_Harry wasn’t sure exactly how it happened or how much they’d had by the time that it did but at some point he ended up pinned to a wall with his legs wrapped around the brunet’s waist and Tom’s tongue in his mouth. His hair felt just as Harry remembered it had when he’d clung to Tom and been dragged back onto the deck. He hissed and growled as he tugged on the silky strands and scratched at his scalp. The taller man nipped at his lips, tilted his chin back and delved deeper._

_In the dream he’d been warm and gentle and tasted of cigarettes and sweat. In real life he was blazing and perfectly rough without causing pain and also tasted like cigarettes and sweat as well as cheap beer, the mint leaves he’d been chewing and something that was intoxicating and entirely Tom and if his heart had given out at that moment Harry would have died a **very** happy man._

_Tom pulled back, eyes blazing with something possessive and protective. Their mouths were connected with a thin strand of silver and their faces were still close enough that they were breathing the same air. This was it. He’d be picked up and taken back to Tom’s room and lain out on the tiny mattress and-. “We should stop.”_

_“What? Why?”_

_“You’re drunk Harry and I don’t want you to regret this. To regret me.”_

_Regret him? How could he ever regret him when Tom was sunlight and spring rain and fresh air? This might be the only chance that he would get. They didn’t have the time to worry that he might ‘regret’. But how earnest his eyes were, how sincere he clearly was…Harry pulled his head back to his shoulder and felt Tom tuck his face into the crook of his neck._

_“You’re right. It’s late. I should go back.”_

_“Yeah…Yeah, you’re right.” But Tom made no move to let go of him._

_“I’ll be sober, fully, again by then. We can pick up where we left off. Maybe you’ll even get that drawing that you wanted.”_

_Tom smiled and pulled back to look at him, pressing one last kiss-chaste and gentle this time-against his lips. “Come on, then. I’ll take you back up.”_

_The fulfilling roughness of his handling. The sculpting of his body. The taste of him. Despite the alcohol he’d had the night before Harry could still remember every detail of that kiss clearly and was reduced to staring at his reflection and touching his lips as his manservant attended to his clothing. The click of the door alerted him to the arrival of another person; thinking it was Pansy he didn’t look up until they spoke._

_“Creevy, tea!”_

_“Yes ma’am.” His manservant hastily left the room, leaving Harry alone with his aunt. He turned to address her and recoiled, clutching his burning cheek where he’d been scratched. His fingers came away wet with blood. She grabbed him by his hair and yanked his head back._

_“Pettigrew saw you last night. Down in steerage with Riddle’s bastard son, him with his tongue down your throat. In front of half the boat! You are not to see that mutt again!”_

_Forbidden from Tom? From his only taste of freedom? The only source of affection he’d ever had? He opened his mouth to speak but didn’t get the chance._

_“You will not see him again. You’ve already been warned, Harrison, of what will be done with you should anything go wrong. And this time no one will be there to pull you back up. Your freakish proclivity will not destroy the reputation and good name of my family am I clear?”_

_“Yes, Aunt Petunia.” The happiness he’d felt the night before was now no more than a bitter memory. “I understand. I won’t embarrass your family.”_

_“You’d best not boy. Now hurry up, we’re going to be late for church.”_

_“Hello, Tom.”_

_“Hello,” he nodded at the bellhop whose name he hadn’t caught the night before and continued bounding down the grand staircase onto the tile floor below. Setting out towards the decorative grating of the church room with a smile on his face and every intention of checking on his raven. He reached for the door only to be confronted by a doorman._

_“I’m sorry Sir, but you have to leave. This isn’t your part of the ship and you shouldn’t be here.”_

_“What do you mean?” His brow furrowed. “I was just here last night.”_

_“Special circumstances, Sir. Now, if you wouldn’t-.”_

_“I can handle it from here.” Tom’s eyes focused coldly on the sneering face of Lucius Malfoy as he slipped through the door. “It is good to see you again, Mr. Gaunt.” That certainly wasn’t sincere. “Harrison told me to extend his thanks to you, as well as that of his fiance, a final time, as well as to alert you to the fact that you’re gallivanting around the ship is at end.” He thrust the folded bill towards them._

_Tom bared his teeth at the gloved hand. “I don’t want your money, I just want to talk to Harry; I know damn well he wouldn’t say any of that shite! Let me in, Malfoy!”_

_“He would and he did, and for his sake you’d best obey him.”_

_“What the bleeding hell does that mean!”_

_Lucius ignored him, handing the money to the doorman instead. “Make sure he returns to and stays where he belongs, would you?”_

_“Of course, Sir.” The doorman grabbed him roughly by the arm and started dragging him away. “Come with me.”_

_“Hey. Hey! I can walk without your help, damn it!” No matter how much he struggled he couldn’t seem to get free of the man’s grip. Lucius watched him go with a smug grin and Tom threw him the most acidic sneer that he could muster. “This isn’t over, bastard!”_

_Not in the slightest._


	6. Unable to Stay, Unwilling to Leave

_So far out to sea, seagulls could no longer be seen or heard. There was only the rush of the surging sea below them and the salty wind through their hair. Harry walked with the rest of the touring party, his hands at his sides and his eyes on the deck, ignoring Dumbledore’s concerned gaze and doing his best to focus on what the Captain was saying instead of the misery which he was drowning in._

_Tom. He wanted Tom. Wanted to talk with him again. Wanted to be held by him again. But he’d been forbidden. His last chance at happiness had been taken away from him and he felt like he could break down at any moment._

_“Excuse me Sir,” the voice of an officer, “another ice warning. This one’s from the Nordam.”_

_Harry’s head shot up, eyes wide behind his glasses. Ice warning? Did that officer really just say **another**? How many had there been already? How dangerous were the waters through which they were sailing? The Captain must have caught his stare because he flashed a reassuring smile from behind his snowy beard._

_“Oh, don’t you worry. Quite normal for this time of year. And we’re speeding up now that the last boilers have been fully lit. We’ll be out of this ice field by tomorrow.”_

_Harry smiled back at him, not feeling in the least bit reassured. Speeding up? Speeding up was only going to make it worse! Was the rudder of the ship even large enough to let them turn in time if they **did** see something? Most of an iceberg was hidden below the surface of the ocean wasn’t it? They were much bigger under water weren’t they?_

_He was probably about as white as ice as they kept walking, which prompted Dumbledore into finally saying something._

_“Forgive me for prying Harrison but you really do seem quite out of sorts today. Are you alright?”_

_“Fine.” No. He wasn’t. He never would be and never had been but what did that matter when this man couldn’t help him. No one could. “Just a little bit concerned. Surely this ice field is more of a threat than the Captain is willing to make it out to be. Surely ‘go faster’ isn’t the answer. And like you said the RMS Titanic is made of iron. She **can** sink.” He bit his lip. “I’ve done the calculations Mr. Dumbledore. Now, I may be a little off on my count since I did it in my head but with the number of life boats times the capacity of the ship…it seems to me that there are not enough for every soul on board.”_

_Dumbledore turned toward him with a dire grimness to his expression, looking down from his greater height as if they shared between them the burden of a terrible secret. “Half.”_

_“What?”_

_“There are only enough life boats for half of the people on board the Titanic if even that. You miss nothing, do you Mr. Potter?”_

_He offered a wan smile that didn’t even come close to touching his eyes. “It pays one to be observant.”_

_“Indeed.” Another solemn nod. “You know, the original design called for another row of boats inside of this one but the prevailing winds of thought within White Star believed that doing so would result in a deck which looked too ‘cluttered’. I was overruled.”_

_Lucius’ cane pinged against the wooden side of one of the lifeboats. “Are they not a waste of deck space as it is on an unsinkable ship?” He breezed past them, leaving the pair to bring up the rear of the group._

_“Sleep soundly, Harrison. This ship is a good one; strong and true. But should something happen…they do say that the one who plans for it is the one who will survive.” Dumbledore quickened his pace as well but when Harry moved to follow he was caught from behind. A large hand clamped down over his mouth to keep him from screaming as he was dragged into the empty gym._

_He spun around the instant he was released, ready to attack the bastard in the bowler hat and overcoat who had attacked-. “ **Tom?”**_

_The brunet sent him a conspiratorial grin as he tipped the no doubt stolen hat. “Top of the morning, songbird. Did you forget about our scheduled rendezvous?”_

_“Lucius told me that he’d taken care of you. That you wouldn’t come around again.”_

_“You can tell him that the next time he wants to turn me away he should do a better job of impersonating you. I know you wouldn’t say those things. And you certainly wouldn’t use that wording. Not to mention you’re neither tall nor blonde.”_

_“I would and I did.”_

_“You almost make it sound like you don’t want to see me Harry. Keep this up and I might get the wrong idea.”_

_“This is impossible, Tom.”_

_“It isn’t.”_

_“ **It is!** I can’t see you anymore.” Harry turned away but Tom pulled him back, swinging him around against the far wall and using his greater size to trap him there. _

_“I need to talk to you.”_

_“I can’t, Tom. Don’t you see? I’m engaged. I’m marrying Pansy. You and I are from different worlds. **We** are too different. There’s no chance for us.”_

_“There’s plenty of chance, Potter. You knew it last night and I know you know it now.” His blue eyes were narrowed. Intense. A single fox lick of brown hair hung down between them and his expression was rather perturbed and in any other situation Harry might have found it funny but now all he wanted to do was smooth out the crease in his brow with his fingers. “You’re no picnic, songbird. You’re a basket case. High maintenance’s dictionary definition. But under all of that…you’re different. You don’t belong with them.”_

_“I don’t belong with you.”_

**_“That isn’t true!_ ** _There was a ferocious anger, then. The sudden hardness of his gaze reminded Harry of the knife that he knew he always kept on him. Of the way the blood had dripped down the blade. Harry flinched. Recoiled. Tom softened. “Songbird-.”_

_“They’ll kill me.”_

_The brunet went deathly still. “What?”_

_“If I keep seeing you. If they catch me. My family. They’re going to kill me. They’ll push me over the side; it’ll look like an accident but it won’t be one. It won’t be.”_

_Tom was silent for a long moment before he sighed and dropped his forehead against Harry’s. Long arms wrapping around his smaller form. Unable to resist melting into that warmth he pressed himself as close as he could._

_“I love you.” Even flush against him Harry almost missed his words. “You’ll never see me again.”_

_‘Don’t go.’ His chapped lips brushed over his forehead. ‘Don’t go.’ Tom stepped away from him, the door creaking as it swung shut behind him. ‘Please.’ He was gone. Harry slid down the wall and buried his face in his knees, no longer able to hold back the tears._

_He’d been perfectly fine with the thought of going his entire life without anything more substantial than a one night stand, hadn’t really wanted to deal with something as binding as love especially not in the vicious world in which he lived. Of course then he’d had to go and play hero by pulling that idiot back over the stern._

_Harry Potter had been on his mind ever since he’d seen him on that upper deck, but it wasn’t until he’d had him beneath him and had looked into those terror-filled eyes that the raven had truly sunk his claws into him._

_And then he’d gone on to imprint himself on his heart. But now…his mood had never once in twenty three years been this foul. Even Regulus couldn’t stand to be around him at the moment. He’d smoked his way through close to twenty cigarettes._

_The sun was setting, blazing dragon’s breath orange as it sank into the sea and smearing streaks of gold pink and red across the darkening sky._

_He should have known better. Potter was different but not that different. A rich brat, at his core. Raised to be near spineless by his relatives. He should have known he’d be rejected as soon as the little bastard was finished playing with him. He should have known that he wouldn’t stand up to his family no matter how miserable they made him. He should have known that-._

_“Tom?” it was so timid that the sea wind almost swept the word away and the brunet wasn’t sure he’d even heard it at all. He turned anyway. “Are you…having a smoking contest with one of the chimneys?”_

_There he was, standing and staring at him in what almost amounted to fear. As if he were looking at a wild animal which he expected to attack him at any moment. Tom tossed his half smoked cigarette over the rail. “What are you here for, Potter? Come to ask me to leave so that you don’t get stoned to death for ‘being in my presence’? Well, I hate to tell you that the decks aren’t officially segregated.”_

_“I did…want to talk to you. But not about that.” He fidgeted uncomfortably. “It’s just…I’ve decided…I’ve decided that I’d rather die happy than live in a cage. …If you can forgive me for not being strong enough to choose you earlier.”_

_He wanted so badly to stay angry with him, to close off and turn him away since he’d made his bed and should have to lie in it, but one look at his downtrodden eyes which threatened tears made that impossible._

_“Come here, songbird.”_

_Despite being in full view of anyone who happened to walk by and on the part of the deck most frequented by the first class Harry didn’t hesitated a moment in throwing himself into Tom’s arms._

_“You’re shaking.” He rubbed his hands over the smaller male’s back. “You’re afraid?”_

_He nodded._

_“Do you want to head back to the stern?”_

_He shook his head._

_“You’re really willing to risk dying to be with me?” Harry tightened his grip on Tom’s clothes. The brunet draped his arms around his shoulders. “You’re never going back to them. You’ll stay with me. We’ll share my cot. Hell, I’ll sleep on the floor. You won’t go anywhere without Reg and I. I won’t let them hurt you, Harry. Never again.”_

_“I can’t just leave, Tom. I need some things.”_

_“Then you can go back once, but only to grab what you absolutely need, and I’ll be coming with you.” Harry nodded and pressed closer. Tom ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t smother yourself in my neck, love. I like you alive, and I think you’d rather be alive to fully experience what I want to show you.”_

_Harry pulled back far enough to look at him. “Show me?”_

_Tom smiled and pulled him gently over to the spire of the prow. “The sunset over the ocean is beautiful, don’t you think?” His hands rested lightly on his hips. “Step up onto the railing; I’ve got you.”_

_Standing on the first rung of the rail Harry came up to about Tom’s chin._

_“Do you trust me?” Reaching up to grab one of the chimney’s supporting lines the brunet climbed onto the railing behind him._

_“Yes.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Then close your eyes.” Tom propped his chin on Harry’s shoulder to make sure that he did as was asked, smiling against the side of his neck as he did so. “Let go. Let go, love, I’m not going to let you fall.”_

_When Harry released his grip on the railing he lifted his arms and propped them out to either side. The wind and sea spray wrapped around their bodies in a fine blanket of silvered vapor._

_“Open your eyes songbird.” He said. “You’re flying.”_

_“I’m flying?” He opened his eyes and, seeing where he was, broke out into the largest smile that Tom had even seen. “I’m flying!”_

_“You’re flying. You’re free, Songbird. Free starting today; they won’t hold you down anymore. Nothing will hold you down anymore.”_

_Tom’s hands were back around his waist and there was nothing but the sea and the setting sun before them and he was so close. It no longer made any difference that they were out there in front of everyone. That it was untoward. That it was illegal. Harry wrapped his arms around Tom’s neck, burying his hands in his hair and pulling his mouth down to his. Nipping gently at his bottom lip and sucking on his tongue, drawing a growl free of him and being pulled tighter against Tom’s chest in retaliation, shielded from harm between his body and the deep blue of the sea._

“That was the last time that the RMS Titanic ever saw the light of day. Approximately eight hours later it was resting in pieces at the bottom of the Atlantic along with many of the people on board, Tom included.”

“So we’ve arrived at the night of the sinking.” George’s eagerness was dampened by the gravity of the tale, the heavy weight of Harry’s words evident to all present in the room from their downcast eyes and pinched expression.

“The damn bloody Captain stood there with the iceberg warning held in his hand after receiving a total of _twelve_ mind you and yet he ordered more speed?” Draco’s scoffing tone really did remind Harry of Lucius. Was he his grandson? Great grandson?

“It was twenty six years of experience working against him. It’s a folly that leads to many disasters, maritime aeronautical and otherwise. He must have believed that anything big enough to sink the ship would have been spotted long before they struck it, and maybe it would have been if the idiot that locked up the binoculars at port hadn’t disembarked with the key in his pocket!” Albus raised an eyebrow at the majority of the room which had now begun to stare at him. “Grandfather would never talk about it. I did research on my own. It was a comedy of errors which led the Titanic to sink. Grandfather’s thoughts about the rudder were correct; it couldn’t corner worth a damn! Everything the Captain knew was wrong and it cost the lives of nearly fifteen hundred people!”

Harry stared distantly at the monitors which displayed the pictures taken of the Ship of Dreams where it now rested, mind far away in a time of clean decks, white paint and the strength of warm arms.


	7. Distant Memories

_“This is the sitting room.” Harry announced around barely contained laughter, pulling off his jacket and tossing it carelessly over the back of a nearby chair. “Will this light do?”_

_Tom, who had wandered over towards the fire place and was looking around in absolute disbelief, started slightly and looked back at him, “what?”_

_“Artists need good light, don’t they?”_

_“That is true, Songbird,” the raven almost choked around a renewed fit of giggles at the taller male’s falsetto French accent. “But I’ve never worked in such horrible conditions! Look around you; the walls are dripping in so much gold that no matter where I look I am going to be blind!” Catching sight of one of the hanging paintings he did a double take and all but lunged across the room. “Is that a Monet?”_

_Harry looked over. “Yes, it is. You know his work?”_

_“Do I know his-?” Tom looked incredulous at the suggestion that he wouldn’t. “How could I not? I dabble in painting and am alright at it but drawing is much more my forte while Monet is a master.” The pads of his fingers trailed lovingly over the dried oil paint. “Look at his use of color. At the blending. At the shading. Isn’t it great?”_

_“I know. It’s extraordinary.” Harry pulled open the drawer of the safe and lifted out its most valuable contents, pleased to find that Pansy wasn’t wearing it around the ship. No doubt out of some jealous paranoia it’d be stolen. “This thing is hideous and clunky, not to mention entirely unnecessary. Yet still she insists on having a safe carted around everywhere.”_

_“Ah, yes, Pugface. Should we be expecting her return any time soon?”_

_“She’ll be a while. No need to worry about that.” Harry smiled and held out the necklace for Tom to take._

_“That’s nice.” The brunet lifted the diamond to the nearest source of light and inspected it critically. “Very nice. What is it? A sapphire. Topaz perhaps?”_

_“That, my love, is a diamond. A **very rare** diamond which once was worn by the King of France himself.”_

_Tom whistled through is teeth, the sound short and shrill. “I can see why you’d want to come back for this, Songbird. Selling it would put us both into first class even if you leave all the rest of your fortune behind.”_

_He moved to pocket it but Harry grabbed his wrist. “That isn’t what I came back for and we aren’t going to take it with us. I’m going to wear it. I figured that, since it’s going to be a new experience for you and all, that it’d be more comfortable for you to have me looking more like one of your ‘French Girls’.”_

_The other man stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before rapidly shaking his head. “We’re pushing our luck as it is. If we’re caught here-.”_

_“We won’t be.”_

_“Harry-.”_

_The raven looked at him with large, innocent eyes. “I thought that you wanted to draw me Tom. Here’s your chance. You’re going to draw me wearing this.”_

_“I-.”_

_“ **Only** this.”_

_The blindsided expression that Tom pulled was worth its weight in solid gold. Harry grinned, taking the diamond back and cinching it around his neck before slowly untying his bow tie and beginning to unbutton his shirt. Slowly. Watching those blue eyes follow his hands as he freed each button, finally revealing his chest and shrugging the fabric from his shoulders._

_Soon enough Harry was standing fully naked before him and Tom was staring openly; had it been anyone else he’d probably be bright red from head to toe but with him it was different. The way that he looked at him…it wasn’t shallow or lustful despite his clear attraction._

_The diamond rested heavy against the hollow of his throat._

_The legs of the sumptuous daybed dragged over the thick carpeted floor. The heavy pillows thudding against each other as Tom re-positioned them to his liking before gesturing towards it._

_“Lie down, love. Make yourself comfortable.”_

_Harry smiled at him and went to position himself on the couch, watching Tom seat himself in another chair and unroll a small satchel of supplies before pulling out a charcoal pencil and his knife and beginning to sharpen it. Shooting the occasional appreciative glance and smirk at him as he did so._

_“The last thing I need,” Harry said as he continued staring at him with hooded eyes, “is another portrait of me looking like a porcelain doll. If you mean it when you say that you love me, Tom, make me human.”_

_“I’ll do my best not to disappoint you, songbird.”_

_“Position me, oh master artist?”_

_“Posing you to my specifications wouldn’t lend to making you look human, Harry. Do as you wish.”_

_“Can you at least tell me if I’m missing something?”_

_“Tell you if you’re missing something?” Tom smiled, setting his tools aside and rising to his feet. “I suppose that I could.” The focus of his eyes made him feel pleasantly warm. “You’re almost perfect.”_

_“Almost? So I **am** missing something?”_

_“You are.”_

_“What?”_

_“This.” Tom pressed his mouth to his, nipping and sucking and pulling back only once the raven’s lips were bitten scarlet, kiss bruised and pouty. “ **Now** you’re perfect. Turn your head towards me and make sure that whatever position you choose is one that you can hold. This is probably going to take about an hour.”_

The smile on his face was wistful. Albus was back to sending the portrait sideways looks.

“That was the most erotic thing that I had ever done in my life up to that point. My heart was pounding the entire time. But I wasn’t afraid. Not with him. There was just something about Tom that made me feel incredibly…safe.” He said. “Tom meant it when he said that my portrait would turn out to be his masterwork. Even if he’d lived, I doubt he’d have produced better work. There’s something about having a love for your subject, a relationship with them, which breathes life into the resultant work that wouldn’t be there otherwise.”

“It’s evident that he favored certain parts of you. Your face; your eyes. Your hands. They’re more detailed. And the diamond. It’s rendered well enough that it’s obvious what it is but…its presence seemed to almost be an afterthought for him.” A faint dusting of color had decorated Draco’s high cheekbones. “When he finished the drawing did you…?”

“Are you asking if we buggered?” he smiled. “I hate to disappoint you Mr. Malfoy but Tom was very professional. I invited that kiss with my teasing, would have gladly invited more, but like down in third class during the party he didn’t take advantage of my state.”

 

 

_Tom leaned out the window of the room, staring at the stars and enjoying the sensation of the sea spray hitting his face despite the biting chill while he waited for Harry to get dressed. Listening to the muted clanking sounds as the little raven puttered about in the bedroom just on the other side of the wall._

_“You’ve put the picture in the safe?” he called softly, grinning ear to ear at the thought of the smaller male’s method of sticking the truth of his departure to his family and the Pugfaced bitch. Though he was still somewhat unhappy about Harry’s decision to leave the Heart of the Ocean behind._

_“I have,” came the reply. “I’ll be out in a moment, I’ve almost finished.”_

_“Don’t forget your makeup, songbird.” Snickering at the storm of indignant muttering that that comment drummed up Tom pushed away from the window and, blowing into his chilled hands, made his way back towards the bedroom door. “Cold out there.” Harry almost walked right into him, his jacket permanently dispensed with and now wearing an emerald button down over black slacks and loafers. “You look nice.”_

_“Thank you, Tom.” He pressed against him, still swollen lips parted into a teasing grin. “Tell me, my love, will I blend in?”_

_“Magnificently.” He tilted Harry’s chin up to kiss him and-._

_A knock at the door had them springing apart, Harry’s eyes widening with horror when a voice demanded “Mr. Potter, are you in there?”_

_“That’s Lucius!” He hissed, grabbing Tom by the wrist and dragging him into the bedroom. “We need to get out of here!”_

_“Lucius? I thought that he was one of you, not one of the help! Why has he been playing errand boy?”_

_“He **is** one of us but, as a favor to her father who is, apparently, a good friend of his he’s all but been appointed Pansy’s keeper. She must have sent him.” The sound of a key in the lock reached them just as Harry pulled open the secondary door. “Come on!”_

_They slipped through and closed it quietly behind them; once out in the hallway Tom pulled Harry under his arm, leading him down the corridor at a swift yet measured enough pace not to look out of place pace._

_“Mr. Potter!”_

_“Shite!” Tom pushed the smaller male ahead of him down the hall. “Go! Go!”_

_“Your drawings-.”_

_“They’ll be fine! Just run!”_

_They pelted down the hallway as fast as they could, turning so quickly they skidded on the tile floor, and nearly bowled over a doorman as they rushed towards the elevator’s grate._

_“Wait! Wait! Wait! Hold it! Hold it, damn you!” Tom caught the grate before it could fully close and both piled inside. He slammed it shut immediately after. “Down! **Down!** ”_

_Lucius made it to the gate too late to reach them; both fought down laughter at his derisive sneer as they dropped out of sight._

_“He’s not going to give up.”_

_“I don’t doubt that, darling, but he’ll have to take the stairs. We’ll be long gone before he gets back down here.” Spilling out onto E Deck Tom nearly bowled a passing worker over, muttering a reflexive apology as they passed. Harry, for his part, nearly tripped over a cart of dishes and received a pointed glare from the staff in reward._

_Down another two flights of stairs and through a set of swinging doors, they stopped to catch their breath._

_“Pretty dogged for a money laden prat. He seems more like a bobby if you ask me.”_

_“Lucius? A bobby? **That** I’d pay to see! The Malfoy head stuck in one of those drab-oh bugger, there he is!”_

_“Keep running!” Three more corners and a dead end as the sound of swinging doors being flung open reached them. Swearing, Tom doubled back and dragged him through another door, closing and locking it behind them._

_The knob banged and jangled madly but there was nothing more the Malfoy head could do to get to them. Harry held his hands clamped over his ears to block out the roaring sounds of moving machinery while Tom peered curiously down into the hole in the floor which belched copious amounts of steam._

_“Now what?”_

_“What?”_

_“I said **now what**?”_

_“I think this is the entrance to the engine room, songbird. There’s only one thing to do; go down.” Tom shouted above the din. “There’ll be another door on the other side I’d bet.”_

_The brunet clambered down the iron ladder with great alacrity, pausing at the bottom to help Harry down. The room was ablaze with the heat of the steam ship’s massive furnaces and everything, from the floors to the men working there themselves, was streaked with coal dust._

_Most were too busy to notice them, but the nearest man paused mid-shoveling and demanded “hold up, what are you two doing down here? You shouldn’t be down here; it’s not safe!”_

_Harry grabbed Tom and began pulling him away; the pair resumed running without a reply. Dodging between more men wielding shovels, piles of coal and heavy wheelbarrows. The machinery hissed about them, expelling gusts of silver steam, and the furnaces spat sparks onto the floor._

_“Carry on! Nothing to see here; nothing at all! Don’t mind us! You’re doing a great job! Keep up the good work!”_

_“Tom! There! The other ladder!” Harry lunged for it but Tom caught him gently and pulled him back._

_“Hold up, songbird. Why the rush?”_

_“We’re in a dingy engine room; we’ll both end up covered in coal if we stay here and I’m more than a bit hot under the collar.”_

_A wolfish grin unfurled across his face and leaned toward him. “Glad I’m not the only one, doll!”_

_For the third time that night their mouths slotted together. Harsh. Rough. Utterly perfect. Their tongues rolled together and their foreheads touched and their teeth clicked. Harry’s hands gripped Tom’s broad shoulders. Tom slid his hands into his black hair and pulled his head to the side. Kissing down his neck. Sucking, drawing out a moan which almost went unheard, with nearly enough force to bruise._

_Almost but not quite._

_“Let’s head up now, love. I’m sure there’s a better place for us to do this than a ‘dingy engine room’.”_

_The cargo compartment was dark and warm and smelled of a mixture of wood polish, leather and brine. Tom pulled him along by the wrist, weaving between crates and statues and other absurdly valuable clutter which had been dragged along on their voyage by the members of the upper class. Both stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of the luxury car that Harry had been riding in when they’d first arrived at the RMS Titanic._

_Tom bounded up to it and pulled open the door before holding out a hand to help Harry up and closing it behind him. From there, he settled himself into the front seat and pressed the horn twice. Smiling in satisfaction as the thunderous sound shattered the silence of the hold._

_Harry pushed the windscreen which separated them down and folded his arms over the back of the seat. “Driver?”_

_“Hello, good Sir. Where shall I be taking you this fine evening?”_

_“I’m afraid that I don’t have any particular destination in mind.” The raven purred, nibbling on the shell of Tom’s ear. “I would like some company though.”_

_“But Sir, that wouldn’t be proper.”_

_“Bugger proper. Get back here, Gaunt!” Harry wrapped his arms around Tom’s shoulders and dragged him backwards into the carriage of the car._

_“Demanding.” He had a feeling that the brunet was eyeing up his arse as he pulled the windscreen back into its proper place._

_“Don’t act like you’re not pleased. No one can find us here.” He turned his luminescent eyes on him as he settled back into the corner, kicking off his shoes. “Your songbirds found a love nest.”_

_“A love nest?” Tom unfurled himself atop him, putting them back in the same position that they had been in when Harry had wound up on the deck. Chest to chest. Hip to hip. Both of them were hard and this was most certainly **not** a dream. “You should be careful, songbird, because talk like that might lead me to think you want to **make** love.”_

_Tom’s smile was a white crescent just visible in the darkness. Harry undid the last button of the brunet’s shirt and pushed it down over his shoulders._

_“And if I told you that I did?”_

_The taller male shifted atop him. “Harry, you need to really think about this. I don’t-.”_

_“I won’t regret it, Tom. Like you said earlier, in the gym: I knew it then and I know it now. I want you. I will always want you. Nothing is ever going to change that.”_

_“Even at the risk that this is no more than a fling?”_

_Harry chuckled. “Nice try. You’ve already told me that you love me, dolt.”_

_“If I had been lying?”_

_“You weren’t.”_

_“You really want this, Harrison? You really want to give up a life of relative luxury for a relationship that could land you in prison with a man who can’t even offer you the certainty of a stable future?”_

_“Tom.” Harry slid his hand between the hanging halves of the brunet’s open shirt, resting it against his chest where he could feel his heart beating against his palm. “The only thing you need to offer me is this. That’s more than anyone else ever has.”_

_“It’s yours.” Teeth grazed gently over his jawline as he moved to his neck. “Completely. No question.”_

_Harry smiled, wrapping his arms around Tom’s shoulders and tilted his head back to give his lover better access to the column of his throat. “That’s all I’ll ever need.”_

_Tom had resumed suckling on the pale skin. Harder this time. Sinking his teeth into the flesh with just shy of enough force to draw blood, leaving behind a massive claiming bruise. His hands fumbled with the buttons of the smaller raven’s shirt, threading an arm beneath his back to lift him far enough off the seat to pull it off. Mouth roving hungrily along the newly exposed territory and latching onto one of his nipples while he thumbed the other._

_Harry moaned and arched, his nails lightly scratching at Tom’s scalp as his grip on his shoulders tightened. Love bites and open mouthed kisses left bruises and silvered wet marks spattered across his chest and stomach and the wings of his hips._

_“Beautiful.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said it and it likely wouldn’t be the last. Tom stared at him adoringly through the dimness of the carriage, one hand sliding gently up and down his side as the other held him up so he wouldn’t crush his smaller partner with his weight. “So beautiful.”_

_“You don’t look so bad yourself, Mr. Gaunt.” Despite the brunet being larger it was easy to draw him back simply by sitting up. Tom allowed him to take control without a word and soon it was him leaning against the door._

_“Something on your mind, songbird?”_

_“I’d like to try something, Tom. If you’d let me?”_

_“I trust you, Harry. You don’t need to wait for me to ‘let you’.”_

_He fumbled with the clasp on his pants and, after finally getting it undone, the brunet lifted his hips to help the raven free him of his last piece of clothing._

_“What are you going to do?” His hand cupped Harry’s cheek. “You’re shaking again.”_

_“I just…I want to…I’ve never done this before and I’m afraid I’ll do it wrong.”_

_Tom’s thumb brushed along the curve of his jaw. “You don’t need to be afraid. And if you’re still uncomfortable we don’t-.”_

_“No. I’m not uncomfortable it’s just…promise you’ll tell me if I’m doing something wrong.”_

_"I promise." Tom’s eyes rested heavy on him as he ran his hand down his sculpted chest and stomach. Curling his fingers around him in a delicate grip._

_“A bit tighter, love. You don’t need to worry about hurting me.”_

_He tightened his grip. Stroked the hardened flesh a few times and watched as Tom’s head fell back and he swallowed thickly._

_“What do I do now?” there was ill-concealed mischief in his voice._

_“I think you know, songbird.”_

_“Oh, no, I don’t. I’ve never done this before, remember?” His tip was leaking. Harry dragged his nail lightly through the slit and grinned when he heard the brunet’s breath stutter. “Tell me what to do, Tom. Tell me what to do.”_

_“Your pretty mouth.”_

_“What about my pretty mouth?”_

_“Use it!”_

_“Use it? Use it how?”_

_“Queen’s **bleeding** mercy Harrison!”_

_Harry grinned even wider. “Use it like this?” He pressed a kiss to the ruddy crown. The brunet let out a feral sounding snarl. “Or maybe you meant like this?”_

_Tom hissed, barely restraining himself from bucking up into the wet warmth which had suddenly enclosed him. His fingers knotted in Harry’s hair, tugging on the ragged strands to coax the raven into bobbing his head. Harry set his hands against Tom’s knees, sliding them up along his muscled thighs to further part them and settle himself in a better position. Eyes hooded and reveling in the musky taste and velvet thickness, uncaring of the drool which was dripping down his chin._

_“Harry.” His voice was husky. “Harry, I’m-.” He didn’t get to finish his warning, arching his back with a low groan as the white hot coil in his belly snapped. “Don’t swallow yet.”_

_The raven looked at him in confusion when Tom pressed two fingers lightly to his lips._

_“Trust me, you don’t want this to happen dry.” The blown pupils contracted slightly in a mild surge of nerves but he did as he was told before swallowing the rest. “Lay back. Just lay back and relax, Harry, it’s going to be fine. I won’t hurt you.”_

_Harry reclined against the leather seat, doing his best to relax as Tom resumed his position atop him, pressing his lips to the inside of his knees before dropping fresh bite marks onto his chest and neck and sealing their mouths together in another kiss._

_He stiffened when slick fingers pressed against him. The first wiggling in up to the first knuckle. Then the second. “Calm down, love.” Another finger joined the first. Scissoring and stretching. Burrowing deeper._

_Harry yelped in surprise, arching off the seat and seeing stars. Tom smirked against his lips._

_“There it is.” He pressed his fingers tight against the little bundle of nerves a few more times before pulling them out and giving himself a few quick strokes. “Ready?”_

_“Yes.” His chest was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and he felt as if he might explode if something wasn’t done quickly. “I’m ready. Tom, please!”_

_“No rush, love.” He pressed against him, sinking into his warmth as slowly as he could bare. Harry whined, tears pricking his eyes, and hid his face in Tom’s neck. Bracing himself as best he could against the pain as he bottomed out. Chests heaving. Hearts pounding._

_“I can feel your pulse.” He murmured, breathless, hands moving from his shoulders to his back. “Move, Tom.”_

_The first roll of his hips pushed him deeper. Harry felt more pain then pleasure. Tom adjusted. Thrust again. Hit the spot from before. Harry sank his teeth into his shoulder to keep from crying out. Tom chuckled and sped up. His fingers tugged on Tom’s hair. His nails carved bleeding furrows down his spine. His palm thudded against the window, cutting a clear swath through the condensation which had formed against the cold glass._

_When it was all over they lay curled together in the seat of the car, warm and satisfied in the afterglow with Harry’s head resting on Tom’s chest and his fingers tracing random patterns against the pale skin._

_“My parents would have approved of you, you know?”_

_“Would they have?”_

_“I’m serious.” He propped himself up on his forearms. “They wouldn’t have cared that you aren’t rich or that you’re a man. All that would have mattered to them is that you make me happy.”_

_“I make you happy, songbird?” Harry nodded, black hair falling into his eyes. “You make me happy too.” He pulled the smaller male back down onto his chest, resting his hands on the small of his back. “As soon as we land Reg and I will smuggle you off the ship. We’ll run. Disappear into New York. Move to the Mid-West, to the East Coast or the Gulf if need be, to get away from them. You’ll never have to think about your old life again. And I’ll do everything I have to in order to make sure we do well for ourselves.”_

_“Sounds good.” Harry mumbled wearily, his eyes falling closed and his glasses displaced oddly on his face. “But for now, let’s take a nap. I’m tired.”_

_Tom pulled the glasses off of him and set them aside on the floor. “Sleep tight, songbird. I’ll wake you up if someone comes around.”_


	8. Hard to Starboard

_The thick artist’s paper crumpled beneath her grip, creaking in protest and threatening to tear._

_“I **knew** it! He **is** a dirty fag! He never got rescued; he was going to **pay** that steerage to bugger him! That’s what they were going to do out on the stern!”_

_“I doubt, Ms. Parkinson, that someone with Mr. Potter’s disposition has any sort of stomach for public sex. Though the intention of the steerage I doubt was purely to assist him. That he’s with him now,” Lucuius sneered, “the deviance they’ve likely gotten up to is nightmarish.”_

_“Harry thinks that he’s going to leave me? For a penniless? For **another man**? He thinks wrong; do something!”_

_“He will not press assault, Ms. Parkinson, and even had we inarguable proof of untoward action between them the Master of Arms wouldn’t act. The officers on this ship want nothing to do with moral crimes.”_

_“But-!”_

_“A robbery, however…”_

_A vicious smirk pulled across her face. “A robbery would land him in dire trouble. Especially were he to steal something as valuable as the Heart of the Ocean.” Pansy all but clubbed him with the massive stone in her haste to hand it over. “You’ll see to it that Gaunt ends up with this?”_

_“And that the Master of Arms is alerted at once.” Lucius pocketed the necklace. “Don’t worry, Ms. Parkinson. Come tomorrow, Mr. Potter will be back in his place and the name of the Riddle bastard will never be spoken of in our circles again.”_

_“Queen’s mercy, that was close! With all the hand prints that you put on the windows the sots nearly caught us with our pants down.” Tom hid his smile in Harry’s scalp as the smaller raven skidded to a stop against his arm. “You look bloody incredible with sex hair.”_

_“With how wild it is don’t I **always** look like I have sex hair Tom?”_

_“Oh contraire, my beloved. Sex hair is a very **specific** type of messy and wild which could never possibly be replicated by any other source. It evolved as a signal to the rest of the human race, you see? A sort of brag of ‘my partner buggers better than yours’.”_

_“Are you drunk, Tom, or is this just how you always act after sex?”_

_“Not always, just with you songbird. Though I must say I’m disappointed in myself.”_

_“Oh? And why would that be?”_

_“You’re still able to walk, aren’t you?”_

_Harry felt his face dust pink as he reached up to pull his lover back down to him. “I am.” He said. “You should really fix that. Now. We’re alone and with how cold and late it is no one will be coming out here.”_

_“There are look outs in that crow’s nest, love. They’re already staring.”_

_“So what?” the raven caught Tom’s lower lip gently between his teeth and tugged on it softly. “We’ll give them a show to keep them warm.”_

_The brunet smiled against his mouth. “I like the way you think my darling.”_

_One hand found the small of his back and pulled him closer. The other knotted in his hair and tugged his head back. Both entirely ignored the squawk of one look out and the wolf whistle of the other._

_“Seems that at least one of them is into it.”_

_“It does indeed.” Harry opened Tom’s shirt with such eagerness that he nearly sent buttons flying across the deck. Desperately excited to have his hands back on the topography of soft skin, hard muscle and raised scars. To feel that heat. That heartbeat. “Contain yourself, Harrison. We’ll get frost bite if we take anything off out here.”_

_“Don’t care.”_

_“You don’t care?” Harry tried to shake his head but, realizing half way through that doing so would force him to part contact with Tom’s lips, whined instead. “Well, I’d rather keep my dick, thanks, so I’ll also be keeping my pants. And I’d prefer not to have my nipples getting frosty either.”_

_He busted out laughing at the look of bewildered horror that Harry now sported, quickly buttoning his shirt back up and licking his kiss swollen lips before reaching out to gently palm him through the fabric of his pants._

_“Don’t worry, doll. We can still have our fun.” He moved to pull him closer, bent to kiss him again and-._

_“ **Ice berg!”**_

_Harry didn’t have time to do much more than register the dread that had plummeted into his stomach like a stone before both he and Tom were almost thrown to the deck. Tom dragged him back just in time to avoid being crushed to death by the avalanche that ensued as a small mountain’s worth of ice tumbled down over the rail._

_An entire planet of blueish white reared high against the flat black of night like a striking snake. The RMS Titanic shuddering under their feet as the iron hull screamed like a creature in agony, sliding broadside passed the ice berg. Both stared frozen in horror as the arctic titan passed them by._

_Tom was first to recover, grabbing Harry by the wrist and picking his way through the scattered bits of ice to the rail and peering over. Joining the small handful of others who had filtered out onto the deck from various different places within the ship to view the spectacle._

_Harry was clutching Tom’s hand bloodless, alternating between staring at the brunet’s unreadable face and scanning the dark water in panicked horror, unsure of exactly what it was that he was looking for. Catching sight of his obvious distress, the brunet made a point of pulling a calm, mostly care free expression. “’S alright, songbird. Look. There’s no damage; that hit wasn’t hard. Just a bump, really. We’ll be fine.”_

_He almost had him fooled. Almost. Had Harry not looked so deep into those blue eyes he might have missed the glint of unease hidden in their depths. Tom was afraid, quite possibly terrified, just like he was._

_“It’s going to be alright.” Tom pulled him in again. Squeezing him tightly. Rocking back and forth. “Everything is going to be perfectly alright. I’ll take care of you. It’s going to be fine.”_

_Harry could sense his agitation but still he relaxed, wanting to believe that Tom was right. That the fact the ship’s officers weren’t scuttling madly about and already trying to evacuate people meant they really weren’t in any danger. That there wasn’t a possibility the RMS Titanic could have been slit wide open below the water line._

_“We’ll be fine.” He echoed, feeling the brunet sag in relief when he agreed. Tom released him and leaned back over the side._

_“It definitely seems like there’s some damage to the paint job, but that’s not going to send anyone to Davy Jones’ Locker.” A couple of people around them had dismissed the ice-strike as inconsequential and begun playing kick the ice with a few of the larger chunks that had fallen onto the deck. “Even if we were to go down, we’d be fine. We’d make it onto a lifeboat. And even if we didn’t another ship nearby would come and fish us out. No one would die.” Harry moved slowly so that he wouldn’t be noticed, bending down and grabbing a shard of ice before straightening up again. “Sinking would work to our advantage anyway, so long as we made sure to stick together. The chaos would make escaping your family all the easier.”_

_“Would it?” He smirked, carefully lifting his collar. “Would it really?”_

_“Yes, it- **argh!** ” Tom bolted upright the moment that the raven dropped the ice down the back of his shirt. Wriggling madly like a fish caught on a line until he finally managed to dislodge the rapidly melting shard. He rounded on an impishly grinning Harry with playful vengeance in his eyes and caught hold of him before he could bolt. _

_“Ah! Tom!”_

_“No, you’re not getting away with that.”_

_“No!” Grinning, he tossed more bits of ice at him. Some of the smaller ones stuck in Tom’s eyebrows and hair._

_“That’s it,” the brunet hoisted him over one shoulder before propping him carefully on the rail. “You’re going overboard.”_

_Harry laughed, wrapping his arms around Tom’s shoulders and pulling his head to his chest. All at once his heart felt light again. How Tom had managed to so easily chase away his fear he doubted he would ever understand, but it was something for which he was extremely grateful._

_After maybe twenty minutes of playing in the ice, out of breath and shivering with faces bitten red by cold and laughter, Harry and Tom had found their way back up the stairs onto the upper deck and stood huddled together for warmth, watching the majority of those who hadn’t already gone back to their business continue to fool around in the ice like children in fresh fallen snow. Tom’s arms tightened suddenly around him as a small group of officers and the Captain himself stopped nearby, trying and failing to keep their voices down, and Harry perked up to listen._

_“-all buckled in on the forward hull.”_

_“Can you sure her up?” the Captain demanded gruffly._

_“Not unless…no, it’s unlikely, Sir.”_

_“Have you seen the damage in the mail hold?”_

_“No. She’s already underwater.” They continued down the stairs._

_The pair exchanged a wide eyed glance, both their faces turning white beneath the chill blush._

_“This is bad.” All efforts that Tom had previously been making to keep him calm were gone. His eyes were as dark as the sky above and the water below. “This is **really** bad, songbird! I…we should start heading towards the lifeboats. Now. It’ll all but certainly be woman and children first but…maybe we can get you onto one.”_

_“I am not going bloody anywhere without you, Gaunt!”_

_The brunet offered him a rictus smile and pulled him in again. “Let’s get moving.”_

_“Wait.” Harry had one hand on Tom’s wrist and the other on the rail, effectively chaining the taller male in place. “I…not yet. We…” He let his eyes drop to the deck._

_Tom stepped closer, slipping his finger under his chin and tipping it up with a soft smile. “Tell me, my love.”_

_“I want to warn my family. As horrid as they were to me, they don’t deserve to drown.”_

_“Going back there is a bad idea, Harry.”_

_“I know.” The raven squeezed his hand, looking up at him with a plea his eyes. “That’s why I was hoping that you’d come with me. To protect me. You do have your knife on you, don’t you?”_

_“No. I left it with my supplies. But I can handle them just fine with only my fists feet and teeth.” He briefly cradled his face in his hands. “Let’s go.”_

_An array of clutter fell to the ground with the crash and clatter of wood and breaking glass to make way for the rolls of blueprints that Dumbledore had brought up with him from his quarters. Locating the one which he wanted, he unfurled it across the table and indicated where the damage was._

_“Water. Fourteen feet above the keel in minutes. Forty in all three holds and boiler room six.”_

_“That’s right, Sir.” The first officer confirmed just as Horace Slughorn squeezed his impressive girth through the door._

_“When can we get back underway, damn it?”_

_“That’s five compartments.” He informed them all, ignoring the other man. “The RMS Titanic can stay afloat with the first four compartments flooded but not with five. Not five.”_

_A number of officers shot each other terrified glances._

_“She’ll go down by the head. Water will spill over the bulk heads at E Deck on to the next, back and back all the way to the stern. There’s no way to stop it.”_

_“What of the pumps?” The Captain asked._

_“The pumps will buy us minutes, but nothing more. She will see the bottom of the Atlantic and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”_

_“This ship **can’t** sink.”_

_“By God, Horus! She’s iron, not magic! She can sink, as I’ve been telling you since the very day of her completion, and she will, now! You’ll get your headlines!”_

_Suddenly very pale, Horus collapsed against the door frame._

_“How much time?”_

_“An hour. Two at most, and that’s if we’re incredibly lucky.”_

_The Captain looked at his first officer. “And how many are on board, Mr. Murdoc?”_

_“By estimate of record, Sir, there are just over two thousand two hundred souls on board.”_

_“The nearest ship?”_

_“The Carpathian.”_

_“It’s received our COD?”_

_“Yes, Sir.”_

_“How long until it gets here?”_

_“…”_

_“ **Murdoc**!”_

_“…Four hours, Sir.”_

_“Four-?” The Captain’s expression became incredibly grim. “Have the staff begin evacuations immediately; to dispense life belts and begin launching the boats. We’re going to get everyone off this bloody ship that we can.”_


	9. Starting to Fall Apart

_Harry felt incredibly nervous and trembled violently as they made their way back down the hallway towards his room. Tom’s hand held his in a grounding grip, his thumb rubbing soothing circles into the pale skin._

_One moment the hallway had been relatively clear, baring a couple of rushing staff members, and the next Lucius seemed to have materialized out of the wall. He knocked into Tom hard enough to stagger him; the brunet snarled at him and dragged Harry protectively behind his back._

_Aside from a concerningly smug sneer in his direction, the Malfoy Head acted as if Tom didn’t exist._

_“ **There** you are, Mr. Potter. Your family and Ms. Parkinson have all been exceedingly worried for you. You disappeared without a trace.”_

_“I’ve been fine.” He informed him coldly, keeping tight to Tom’s side. “And I won’t be staying.”_

_“Oh?”_

_“’Oh’ indeed.” Tom snapped at him as they stepped through the door of the room._

_Silence fell instantly the moment that they were noticed by the occupants-Pansy, his Cousin Aunt and Uncle-though whether that was from the brazenness of Harry’s return or Tom’s cool presence wasn’t clear._

_Vernon was the first to move, his face rapidly turning an ugly shade of radish red at the sight of the prominent bite marks braceletting his throat. “ **Boy-!”**_

_He didn’t make it more than a step towards Harry before Tom was between them, his eyes serpentine and his expression promising pain. He loomed over him, arms folded and head slightly cocked to one side, but said nothing. He didn’t have to. His Uncle retreated, floundering to hide his fear._

_Tom set his jaw and thrust out his chin._

_“As I told Lucius outside, Tom and I won’t be staying.” With his lover shielding him Harry didn’t feel afraid anymore; he stood up straighter and rolled his shoulders back, catching Tom’s small smirk out of the corner of his eyes. He tried not to let the nearly demonic grin on Pansy’s face bother him too much. “As a matter of fact we were just about to head to the life boats and cue up to get off the ship. Now, Tom disagrees, but despite your abhorrent treatment of me through the years I felt that you didn’t deserve to go down with the ship. Now-.”_

_The door flying open without warning sent Harry stumbling forward and he would have fallen if Tom hadn’t pivoted and caught him. Annoyed and with his glasses now askew, Harry rounded on the new comer only to clam up when he realized he was looking at the ship’s Master of Arms._

_“Someone reported a robbery?”_

_‘A robbery?’_

_Pansy stepped forward, that damned grin even bigger than before, and nodded. “Yes. We’ve been robbed; a large diamond necklace was taken from the safe.”_

_“We’ve reason to believe that one among our party invited that steerage into our rooms.” Lucius jabbed his cane in Tom’s direction. “Search him.”_

_“Hold still, Sir. Now, don’t go doing anything stupid.” The Master of Arms and another officer advanced on Tom who, once again, pushed Harry behind him. His posture was rigged and his eyes were cold. He bared his teeth at the men, growling in the back of his throat. “Calm down, Sir.”_

_“Don’t touch me!”_

_“We’re simply going to search-.”_

_“ **Don’t** touch me! I don’t bloody have anything, damn it! The only thing I wanted to ‘steal’ from them is Harrison!”_

_“Sir!” He started struggling the moment that they caught hold of him; Harry was flung away by the officer as they surrounded Tom and started going through his pockets. Turning them out. Empty. Nothing. Then. “This it, Ma’am?”_

_He’d pulled the Heart of the Ocean out of the pocket of Tom’s coat; Harry watched the giant diamond swing from its chain in horror._

_“Yes.” She said sweetly, that evil grin back on her face. “That’s it; I knew he stole it! I want him prosecuted!”_

_No. No! That wasn’t possible; he knew that it couldn’t be! Tom hadn’t so much as touched the Heart since he’d first shown it to him. Harry had had it on him the entire rest of the time. He hadn’t even been in the room when he’d put it away in the safe, and immediately afterwards they’d been forced to run from Lucius._

_Lucius!_

_“You!” He rounded on the Malfoy Head with murder in his eyes. “You ruddy bastard! You planted that on Tom when you ran into him in the hallway! He didn’t steal anything! He couldn’t have! I was in the room with him the entire time!”_

_“He probably took it while you were putting your clothes back on, dirty poof!” Dudley sneered at him._

_“Well, there you are.” The officer handed the Heart of the Ocean to Lucius who pocketed it after a nod to Pansy. The Master of Arms, deaf to the protests of both Tom and Harry, had bound the brunet in cuffs. “You’ll be coming with us, Sir. The authorities will be taking you off once we get to New York.”_

_“We’re not going to make it to New York! Don’t you realize that the **ship! Is! Bloody! Sinking!** You can’t take him down there!” His cousin grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him back. Harry shook him off and resumed tugging on Tom’s chains. “Let him go!”_

_“Let me go! I didn’t steal anything; I’ve been set up!”_

_“Don’t resist, Sir. You’re only going to make things worse for yourself!”_

_“Let him go! Let-!” Dudley’s fist smashed into his jaw and Harry hit the floor with a thud, his vision starting to go dark. Tom went berserk; both the Master of Arms and the officer which had accompanied him could barely keep their grip on him, only finally being driven back out of the room when Lucius brought his cane down on him._

_The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was Tom bellowing his name as he was carted down the hallway._

_He regained consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later lying on the bed instead of on the floor where he’d been when he lost consciousness. That in and of itself was…a little bit odd. Normally when he was dropped by his ‘dear’ cousin he was left where he’d fallen without even so much as a welfare check. For all that the Dursleys knew or cared he could have broken his neck or choked to death on the carpet. So it had to have been someone else._

_How long had he been out? Where was Tom? Was he alright? How long did they have until the ship sank?_

_“You’ve only been unconscious for five minutes, luckily. I’d have hated to have had to leave you here after all the trouble that I went through getting rid of Gaunt.”_

_Harry was still having trouble thinking straight; moving too quickly sent a wave of nausea through him and it was only by way of incredible determination that he managed to sit up without purging the contents of his stomach._

_“All the trouble that you went through?” he repeated, still managing to sound cold despite being dazed. “ **You** told Lucius to set Tom up? Why?”_

_“Because he doesn’t deserve you! Because he’s steerage! Because he’s another man! You’re **mine** Harrison, not his!”_

_“I’m not either of yours!” He threw himself off the bed; his knees buckled and he fell but he quickly got up again. “Not in the way that you think that something belongs to you! I’m a **person** , not a bleeding object! And I will **not** be treated as if I were anymore; by you or by anyone!”_

_“And what do you expect to do about it?” that grin still in place, she moved towards him. Harry backed away. “You’re weak, Harrison. You don’t have the will to resist. Not without him around. And considering the fact that he’ll be going down with this ship…”_

_“You evil **bitch**!” _

_“We’re going to go up and get into a lifeboat now.”_

_“Stay away from me!” His eyes flicked to the small table beside him, to the little satchel of Tom’s supplies and the knife lying on top._

_“We’re going to get picked up by the next nearest ship and continue to America.”_

_“I’m warning you, Pansy.”_

_“We’re going to marry and you’re never going to engage in such filthy behaviors again!” She grabbed his arm. Harry snatched up the knife and swung, releasing it almost immediately after the blade made contact. Pansy shrieked and released him and he bolted for the door without checking to see how much damage had been done._

_Harry all but kicked the door down and thundered down the hallway, pushing past and clambering over the people that didn’t get out of his way quickly enough. Some part of his mind numbly realized that a life belt had been strapped onto him while he was unconscious._

_Tom. He had to get to Tom. He had to save Tom. He’d be damned if he let him drown after being framed by some harpy!_

_A crowd had gathered at the base of the grand staircase. Officers were shouting for people to remain calm while waiting to go up onto deck. Dumbledore moved passed him up the stairs, arms filled with blue prints, but Harry caught him before he could pass._

_“Mr. Dumbledore! I know that the ship is sinking and that you must be incredibly busy but I have to ask something of you! Where would someone under arrest be held by the Master of Arms?”_

_“Harrison, you need to-.”_

_“ **Please** , Sir! I…Tom means everything to me. He’s innocent. I can’t leave him down there to die; he’d come for me if our positions were reversed.”_

_The man looked back up the stairs before glancing back at him with a sigh. “Go all the way down to the lowest deck. Turn right. Follow the servant’s passage, turn left and then turn right again. You should find him there.”_

_“Thank you, Sir.”_

_“Harrison.” Harry turned back to him. “Be quick. It may already be too late and I would hate to have sent you down there only for you to become trapped.”_

_He nodded before running back down another hall, quickly finding a doorman posted in front of an elevator grate and making a beeline straight for him._

_“Lifts are closed.”_

_“I need to get down to the lowest deck, there’s a life in danger! Someone that I’m very close to. I have to-.”_

_“Lifts are closed.”_

_Harry seized the man by the collar and threw him into the lift, pinning him to the wall by the neck and snarling into his face. “I am **through** with being polite!” He snapped. “You! Will! Take! Me! **Down!** To the lower deck! **Now!** ”_

_Whether it was the blood on his hands or the wild look in his eyes that convinced the man Harry neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that he dove for the control lever and then proceeded to press himself against the wall and stare at him as if he were a dangerous wild beast._

_The ride down was mostly uneventful. Up until the point when they’d almost reached their destination. Sea water poured through the grate into the lift; the doorman let out a strangled squeak and Harry let out one of the more choice swears that he’d heard Tom use, throwing open the gate._

_“Sir, please!” The doorman tried to grab him but Harry dodged his grasp and leapt out. Landing with a splash in the waist deep water and instantly having the breath knocked out of him. Tom had not been kidding when he’d called the water cold. “I’m going back up! I’m going back up!”_

_“I-wait! Hey!” Water poured from the lift like a rushing river as it rose back up towards the higher decks. Away from the flooding. “Fucking coward!”_

_Grumbling mutinously under his breath Harry turned and began slogging through the waist deep water. Down the hallway and into progressively more shallow water until he found the servant’s passage._

_Had he said turn right or turn left? He couldn’t remember._

_“Tom!” He could hear the desperation lacing his own voice. “Tom! Tom, please, answer me!”_

_“Harry!” The raven swung around at the sound of his voice. “Harry! Over here!”_

_“Tom!” He took off running in the direction that his voice had come from. Turning right. Then left. Tom’s eyes were wide and his face was drawn white. His hands were cuffed to a pipe. Outside the window was nothing but water and more water was slowly creeping into the room. “Oh, Tom, thank God!”_

_Harry threw his arms around his shoulders and kissed him. An action filled with relief, desperation and fear. His vision blurred from the hot tears spilling down his face._

_“Are you alright?”_

_“I’m fine.”_

_“Songbird, half of your face is swollen black and blue!”_

_“And you’re chained to a bleeding pipe on a ship that’s sinking! Worry about me later! Where’s the key!”_

_“I’ll rip that bastard’s arms off the next time I see him.”_

_“The **key** , Tom!”_

_“That Malfoy prat took the key with him when he buggered off and left me here after threatening me with a gun and punching me a couple of times while I couldn’t fight back like the coward I knew he bloody was!” He huffed. “There may be a spare in that cabinet. It’ll be small and silver.”_

_Harry rushed across the room and ripped open the door of the cabinet. Searching through the rows and rows of keys. Large ones. Medium  ones. Small ones. All the same orange-gold shade of metal. “They’re all bronze, Tom! None of them are silver!”_

_“Bugger! Try the desk; the top or the top drawer!”_

_Back across the room. Papers covered the top of the desk. He threw them around without a care while searching for the key. Ripped the top drawer completely out of the desk and only barely resisted the urge to dump it out. Nothing. The water was rising; as the ship tilted downwards at the bow the stern slowly rose, leaving the room at an odd slant. “Tom, it’s not in here! There’s no key!”_

_The brunet swallowed thickly. Harry could see the pulse jumping on the side of his throat. “You’re going to have to go and find help.”_

_“But-.”_

_“I’ll be fine. It’s the only way. Go! Quickly!” Harry nodded vigorously and turned to run out, hearing Tom shout “I’ll just…wait here!” after him._

_E Deck was empty. Harry half ran half swam to the stairs and rushed up them onto D Deck; catching sight of someone and starting towards them only to have them bolt away. He hissed and fell against the wall as the ship tilted sharply again. Closing his eyes. Trying to calm down enough to think._

_No one was going to help them. There was no key. He couldn’t let Tom drown. What to do? What to do? His eyes opened and landed on the metal-nozzle head of the hose coiled on the wall, hung beside a glass paned box which read BREAK IN EVENT OF FIRE._

_Axe._

_The glass shattered under a blow from the nozzle; Harry reached in and grabbed it and pulled it out. Taking off back down the hall. Pounding down the stairs._

_Stopping dead half way down._

_“Oh, Lord’s mercy.” Water had all but reached the ceiling. Harry propped the axe head between two bars of grating overhead, ripped off his jacket, then grabbed it again and dove into the water._

_He was **not** a good swimmer, but he’d manage. He had to. With the axe held in one hand and the tilt of the floor leading the depth of the water to be well over his head Harry half floundered half swung down the hall along the thick pipes which hung from the ceiling. Not allowing himself to flinch away from the gouts of sparks which hissed from exposed wiring even as they burned his hands._

_Tom. Tom. Tom. He had to get to Tom._

_The going became slightly easier once his feet could touch the ground. By the time he got back the water had risen halfway into the room._

_Tom looked resigned when he realized that no one was with him. That resignation transformed into surprise when Harry held up the fire axe._

_“Will this work?”_

_“…we’ll find out.” He pulled his hands as far apart as he could and pinned the thin chain between them tight against the pipe. Harry stepped forward and raised the axe. “W-Wait a moment, songbird. Take a couple practice swings first against that cabinet.”_

_Harry nodded. Turned, clumsy with the tilt of the wet floor and the weight of the axe, and swung. The blade bit into the wooden door with a sharp **bang**!_

_“Good. Now try and hit the same spot.”_

_He swung again, missed entirely and decimated a small table. Tom looked between the wreckage and the water that had now reached his feet._

_“Close enough! Come on!” Harry hurried over and raised the axe again. “Move your hands further apart; choke up on it a little more.” He obeyed. Tom looked at him with unconcealed fear in his eyes. “I trust you.”_

_He closed his eyes and swung. The head of the axe slammed against the thick pipe with a resonant clang. Terrified that he’d missed, had hit Tom and cut his hands off or worse and that he’d see blood everywhere, Harry dropped the axe with a clunk and opened his eyes moments before the brunet dragged him into a near crushing embrace._

_“I love you. Jesus, Harry, I love you! Thank God you came back!”_

_“I knew you’d do it for me.” He buried his face in his chest, ice water lapping halfway up his calves. “I couldn’t leave you.”_

_“We need to get out of here! Now!” He cupped his bruised cheek gently for a moment before dragging him out of the room. The hallway that Harry had gone down to reach him was now entirely submerged._

_“That was the way out!”_

_“We’ll have to find another way out, then!” They rushed up the hall. Up another smaller set of stairs to a door like the one that had led into the boiler room. Tom tried the knob. It rattled but didn’t budge. “Locked!” He hissed. “Stand back, love.”_

_Harry retreated a few steps back down the narrow flight of stairs. Watched Tom brace both hands against the walls and bring his feet up. Assailing the door with a powerful kick. Once. Twice. The wood squealed and gave and just like that they were rushing down a crowded hall with a member of the staff on their heels._

_“Oi! What the hell do the two of you think you’re doing? You can’t just go destroying things! That’s White Star property, that is, and you’re going to have to pay for-.”_

_“ **Shut up!** ” Both Tom and Harry shouted it at once, not slowing their pace._

_The next staircase that they found was clogged with people; all third class from the look of their clothing. Shouts and the sounds of fighting and rattling metal could be heard from the top._

_“Tom!”_

_“Seamus!” The Irishman came bounding out of the crowd toward them. “What’s happening? Can we get out through here?”_

_“No! It’s hopeless; they aren’t letting anyone through! Threatening to shoot us if we try!”_

_“We have to do something!”_

_“We will, songbird.” Tom swept him under his arm. “We will, don’t worry.”_

_“Whatever we do, Tom, we’d better do it fast!”_

_“Reg!”_

_“The boats are all gone and the entire place is flooding! There are no other exits in the direction I came from and it’s an impasse here!”_

_“We’ve noticed.” Harry said._

_“This way, then! Come on!”_

_Down they went through more clogged and narrow halls. Tom gripping Harry’s hand tightly so as not to risk losing him in the crowd. Spying another staircase, he dragged them up it; they joined the group which had already formed behind the locked gate._

_“ **What the bloody hell are they doing locking everyone down here?”**_

_“You don’t know, rich boy? They’re making sure your kind survive; they’re the ‘better half’ after all.”_

_“Stop it, Black! He’s not one of them anymore.” Tom looked around and spied a large wooden bench which had been bolted to the floor. “Reg, Seamus, help me with this! Harry, get everyone out of the way!”_

_The raven nodded and started dragging people clear. “Move aside! Please! Move aside!”_

_The bench came up with the snapping off wood, bits of floorboard still stuck to its legs. Between the three of them they only just barely managed to lift it paying no heed to the screams of the staff to put it down._

_“One! Two! Three!” The grate buckled but didn’t give. They retreated a few steps and adjusted their grip. “Again!”_

_The bench punched through this time and they threw it at the man for good measure, the resultant stampede nearly trampling over him as it passed by._

_The decks were a mass of chaos. People pushing and shoving. Jumping off the sides and into the life boats. Officers beating them back with poles and boards, some with weapons drawn. Gunshots echoed out around deck. At the sound of them, battered by the crowds, Harry pressed himself closer to Tom’s broad back and looked around in open fear._

_“The boats are gone!” He wasn’t sure if it was fear or sorrow that he felt more strongly in that moment._

_“No they aren’t; down there! Come on!” Tom all but dragged him along at a full sprint, Regulus and Seamus struggling to keep up but eventually losing them in the crowd._

_How the orchestra could still be merrily playing ragtime tunes as if they weren’t going down fast was beyond both of them._

_“Music to drown by: definitely first class.”_

_Another gunshot sounded from right beside them as they reached where lifeboats were still being deployed and Harry recoiled, ears ringing, clutching at Tom’s shirt and nearly knocking him over._

_“Woman and children only!” The officer looked at them with an open threat on his face._

_“He is a child! Barely fourteen! Let him on!”_

_What? “Damn it, Tom! No! I’m seventeen! An adult! Don’t listen to him!”_

_“He’s fourteen!” He clamped his hand over Harry’s mouth to silence further protests and pushed him forwards._

_Harry ripped his hand away and clung to him. “No!” He was all but screeching now, nails and fingers digging harshly into flesh through coarse fabric. “ **I’m not leaving! Not without you!”**_

_“You have to go, songbird! Now! I’m a survivor. I’ll be fine! Get in the boat, Harrison!”_

_“No, Tom!”_

_“Trust me, Harry! Get in the boat!”_

_“No!”_

_“Get in the boat, Mr. Potter!” How long Lucius had been standing there neither of them knew and at that moment it didn’t really matter. “I’ve an arrangement with the first officer on the other side of the ship. Mr. Gaunt and I can both get off without a need for fear. As far as repayment goes…Narcissa does so love fine art.”_

_He was lying. Harry knew that he was lying. Tom knew it too, but he still looked at him with a forced smile and cradled his face in his hands. “See. Everything will be alright, just like I promised. Now, hurry. Get on the boat. Before it leaves.” Harry didn’t budge. “Trust me.”_

_“Step aboard, lad!” The choice was taken out of his hands when an officer picked him up as if he really were some child and dropped him into the lowering boat._

_The brunet watched him descend out of reach and Harry stared back. Heart breaking more with each foot they dropped along the squeaking pulley system. With every inch that separated him further from Tom, outlined against the burning white flares and the music which continued to waft over the deck as if nothing were wrong._

_‘No!’_

_He jumped from the life boat, catching hold of the wet railing and nearly losing his grip. Hearing both Tom and Lucius yelling down at him things like “No! What are you doing!” and “Stop him!” He would have all but certainly slipped off and plummeted into the water far below had it not been for the crush of people pressing against the rails that reached down and dragged him the rest of the way over._

_He immediately started running back through the ship, across decks and up staircases and around corners and finally barreling straight into Tom at the base of the grand staircase._

_“You idiot! God damn it Harry, how could you be so stupid! Why would you do something like that; only you would jump **back onto a sinking ship!** ”_

_“I’m **not** leaving you! Never!”_

_“I told you to trust me!”_

_“You jump I jump!”_

_“Damn it all, Harrison I would have been fine on my own! I wanted you safe!” Harry clutched at his back as Tom pulled him in. Inhaling his scent and resting his chin on his shoulder and-._

_“ **Gun!”**_

_The bullet blew the head off of the carving on the railing just in front of them but, mercifully, missed._

_“Fuck!”_

_“It’s Lucius; run!”_

_More bullets tore through wood and water as the pair bolted out of the stairway and into the semi flooded dining room._

_“Go! Hide! He’s after me, I’m sure of that much; let me deal with him!”_

_“Tom-!”_

_“ **Just do it!”** His tone brokered no argument. Harry scuttled quickly under a half-submerged table, only just able to keep his head above water. Seconds later the blonde came barreling through the door, gun raised high and aimed directly at Tom’s chest. “Mind telling me why you’re firing that thing inside a crowded ship like some lunatic, Malfoy?”_

_“I’m not surprised that a cur can’t understand the weight of a man’s word. Of honoring a promise to their friend.”_

_“I assure you, the one who doesn’t understand honor is you.”_

_“I’m on this ship for one reason: I was asked to look after Ms. Parkinson’s assets while her father couldn’t. And Mr. Potter is her greatest asset as, defects aside, he insures her future.”_

_Harry shifted closer under the table, doing his best to keep the water around him from sloshing too much and giving him away. The Malfoy Head’s finger was resting on the trigger of the pistol. There was a large glass window directly behind him._

_“Harry isn’t an object! He isn’t an investment! He’s a human, a living creature with thoughts and feelings, and I take issue with you lot treating him as if he weren’t!”_

_“Well,” he dragged the hammer back with his thumb, “this last bullet takes issue with you, Mr. Gaunt. It’s a pity that Mr. Potter seems to have run off. Watching you take a bullet to the heart might have broken the stubborn streak he seems to have developed.”_

_“ **No!”** Harry tackled Lucius from the side just as the gun went off, throwing all the weight behind the lunge that he could and pushing him towards the window. The bullet whizzed by so close that it caught at Tom’s hair before embedding itself in the wall. The glass shattered and the man shouted and Harry was left staring at the coat in his hands; all that was left still on board of the blonde._

_Had he just…killed someone?_

_Harry flinched violently when Tom’s hand touched his arm. “Hush, love. Come here. You’re soaking wet.” He took the coat from him and pulled it over Harry’s shoulders, guiding his arms through the heavy fabric. “You’ll need it. It’s probably impossible for us to avoid going into the water now so our goal is to stay warm and afloat for as long as possible. Understand?”_

_He nodded._

_“Good.” Tom ran his fingers through his short black hair, a look on his face which Harry had never seen before and definitely didn’t like. It made him extremely nervous. “Listen, songbird, I just want to make sure…you know I’ll always be there, don’t you? In your heart if nothing else. If-.”_

_“ **Stop!** ” Harry grabbed Tom by the shoulders and shook him, watching his expression shift into one of bewildered alarm. “Don’t you dare fucking say it! Don’t you dare talk like you’re going to die! Like either of us is going to die! **We’re not!”**_

_“Of course not, my love.” But the reassurance didn’t touch his eyes. “Come on. We need to find a way back up onto the upper deck.”_


	10. Prayer For The Dying

****

_They bolted between the shelves so quickly that they almost rammed into them and set off an avalanche of plates. Neither of them let their feet touch the ground as they flew down the staircase that they eventually came to. One light. Two. Landing on the fifth step in ankle deep water. Tom motioned for silence, and then looked up at the ceiling above them. Back up the steps. Tilting his head slightly as he listened._

_Harry did the same._

_The RMS Titanic groaned. The metal whined, high and piercing, as the hull filled with hundreds of gallons of sea water which strained against the bolts that held the ship together._

_“This is bad. This is bad.” Tom seemed to be more adept at interpreting the sounds than Harry was. “We need to go. Need to move. At this rate…we have maybe ten minutes before this entire deck is underwater.”_

_He left the stairway, drawing Harry with him, and both peered down the hallway to both sides. To their right, close enough to touch, was yet another locked grate. To their left, a handful of yards away, was a set of wooden doors through which barely-restrained water was pouring in a high pressure stream._

_Once those doors gave way…_

_Water was now running down the stairs they’d taken._

_“Come on!” The lights dimmed and brightened in time with the sparks which shot from the wiring. They ran as fast as they could while having to slog through waist deep water only to turn a corner and find their paths blocked by another surge of water. “Go back!”_

_Go back to where, exactly? They were trapped between a rock and a hard place. Or rather a rush of water and a pair of doors which were barely holding back what seemed like the entire ocean. And to make matters worse almost the moment that they turned around those doors gave way, unleashing a tsunami of glacial water._

_“Go!” Tom dragged him into an off shooting narrow hall at random. Pushing him ahead of him as the wave came crashing down behind. “Run! Just run! Don’t stop!”_

_It was almost as if it was pouring rain in the little hallway. The lights flickered and flashed like so many bolts of lightning in a vicious storm. Then went out entirely._

_They couldn’t outrun the water. It latched onto their ankles and ripped them off their feet. Icy salt water poured up his nose and down his throat and lit his eyes on fire. His back hit the floor, scraping along the carpet with the vicious current. When he finally popped up again he was coughing, spluttering and blind. Deafened by the roar of the water._

_“Tom!” Frothing white water sent him flying passed another set of stairs. He coughed and cleared his throat before trying again. “Tom!”_

_“Harry!”_

_They were flung against the locked grate. More hissing sparks rained down on their heads. The force of the water all but crushed their bodies against the unforgiving metal and left them both gasping for air._

_“Harry!” Tom’s hand closed around his wrist and the other scrabbled at the molding of the wall. Gripping it and dragging his body forward against the current. “This way! Come on!”_

_The speed at which the water rose was horrifying. Waist deep. Chest deep. Over their heads. By the time they made it to the stairway they’d passed before they had to dive down to get through it._

_Another locked gate met them at the top._

_“No! Oh God, no! Please!” Harry clutched at the metal and shook it as if hoping that, if he scratched at the lock enough, it would magically spring open._

_“Shake it! As hard as you can! If we both do it together it might be enough to break the lock open!”_

_He’d seen ten men shaking it at once to no affect at the other stairwell. Adrenaline aside, Harry doubted that it would work out in their favor. The gate rattled about like dry bones but didn’t budge._

_“God **damn** it! I wish I had my knife on me; I could have broken the lock!” The water had reached their feet again. Harry felt like his heart was thudding out of his chest. “ **Help**!”_

_The water was spilling over the top of the stairs and onto A Deck with the sound of a rushing river. There was no one left to hear them, certainly. No one coming to save them. Still, they both screamed for help at the top of their lungs. Their voices echoing off the walls. And then…_

_“Did you hear that, songbird?” Despite their situation the brunet still managed to look hopeful. “Listen!” Harry strained his ears to hear over the rushing water and groaning ship and caught a sound, just barely loud enough to be heard, that made his heart soar._

_“Footsteps! Tom…Tom! Those are footsteps!”_

_“Yes, love, those are footsteps! We’re getting out of here! **Help! Help! Over here!** ”_

_The footsteps grew louder. And louder. And then a man came into view. A staff member, by the look of him, in a white shirt and black pants half soaked and with a wild look on his face. He threw them a short glance before starting up the stairs._

_“No! No! Wait!”_

_“Please!”_

_“Stop! Open this gate! Please!”_

_“Help us! Please! Please help us!”_

_The man paused on the stairs, swore under his breath, and then came running back towards them with a ring of keys in one hand._

_The water level had risen so high that even while standing on the lower rungs of the gate it reached their knees. The man fumbled with the ring. Hands shaking violently. Examining every key that he had._

_“Come on! Come on!” Tom looked back at the water in a panic. “Let’s go! Come on, man!”_

_The man shoved a key into the lock but it wasn’t the right one. The emergency lights on A Deck spat orange sparks with a loud crackle. The man flinched. The keys slipped from his fingers._

_He looked up at them with guilt in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I dropped the key.”_

_The water was up to their chests now. The man swam back up the stairs, leaving them behind._

_“No! Please! Come back! **Please**!” It wasn’t just sea water burning his eyes now as he reached futilely through the gate towards the now empty stairwell._

_“Fuck!” Tom plunged under the water and thrust his own hand through the grate. Blind between the flickering light and the murky water. Feeling about until finally managing to find the hard metal of the ring of the keys._

_He shook out his hair and pushed his dripping bangs out of his eyes, holding up the ring like a trophy of war and spitting out a mouthful of sea water. “I’ve got it!” The keys rattled around in his grip. “Which one!”_

_Much shorter than Tom was Harry was forced to cling to the grate just to keep his head above water. “I…uh…the small one! Try the small one!”_

_“Small one. Small one. Right.” He flipped through them quickly before locating the key Harry had mentioned. Reaching back through the bars. Trying to slide the key into the lock. Missing once. Twice. Finally getting it inside._

_“Come on, Tom!”_

_“I’m trying! I’ve got it in but it’s stuck!”_

_“I’m scared, Tom! I’m scared. I don’t want to drown! I don’t want to drown!”_

_“You’re not going to, songbird! Stop panicking, it’ll only make the situation worse!” With both hands he tore at the key. Turning it with all his might. And then._

_The lock gave way with a clang. And not a moment too soon; Tom threw the grate open just as their heads touched the ceiling._

_“The stairs! Go for the stairs!”_

_They swam, desperately, forwards. The stairs so close, yet still so far away. The water level had reached the pipes. Like before they had to dive down in order to reach the way out. Dripping wet and freezing they hauled themselves upwards with death grips on the rails._

_The lounge room was nearly tilted vertical; many of the tables and chairs which hadn’t been bolted down had already slid against the far wall and the massive grand piano look about ready to do the same. Running through it was like running up a steep hill, the slant so extreme that Harry thought for sure that he’d go tumbling backwards at any moment._

_He caught sight of Dumbledore standing in front of the grand hearth, staring fixedly at the painting hung above it just as Tom dragged him through the doorway._

_“Wait!” The raven dug his heels into the carpet. “Tom, wait! Please!”_

_The brunet shook himself out of his daze and blinked at him. “Songbird?”_

_“Wait. I just…come here.” He tugged him back towards the fire place; the other man still hadn’t noticed them. “Mr. Dumbledore.”_

_He looked over at them. “Harrison.” The twinkle was gone from his eyes. “This is Tom?”_

_“I am.”_

_“I’m glad that you got to him, Harrison. Now you must both go. Hurry and get off this ship.”_

_“We must…But what about you?”_

_The ship let out a thunderous cry before Dumbledore could reply. Tom took his hand again._

_“Come on. We’ve got to move!”_

_“But-.”_

_“Listen to him, Harrison. This is my choice.”_

_“But Sir-.”_

_“When you are older, and I hope that you survive to become so, you’ll understand.”_

_He turned back to the fireplace as Tom dragged Harry through the revolving glass doors and back out into the room of the main stairwell._

_“Why are there still so many **people** here when all of the life boats have been launched?”_

_“Because most of the boats were launched half full, if even that. Not to mention that even if they had been full there was only half of the necessary number of boats to begin with.”_

_“Who’s the idiot that thought that was a good idea? No, better yet, who’s the idiot that let it happen! If it can float than it can sink!”_

_“You’re preaching to the choir, love.” Harry told him as they ascended the grand staircase._

_Even the upper decks were beginning to flood. The orchestra still played but, to Harry’s horror, it was no longer the upbeat tunes from before. All facades of trying to keep calm were gone as the ship began to lift entirely out of the water._

_“What is that?” Tom demanded as the voices around them began to crescendo into screams. “What **song** is that and why are they playing it?”_

_“It’s a hymn. Nearer, My God to Thee.” Harry watched the men continue playing even as they began to lose their balance. “Ironic. That it’s that one in particular they’ve chosen to play.”_

_“Why would that be? I’m not a particularly religious person, love, so you’ll have to enlighten me in that regard.”_

_“In hubris they said that even God himself couldn’t sink the Titanic. Now they beg him for mercy as it does.” The rush of water was loud behind them. “We need to keep moving, don’t we?”_

_“You’re right. Before this slant gets any steeper we must find something that we can hold onto.” They resumed running. Passing the people who were frozen in shock and minding their surroundings so that they didn’t risk being trampled._

_Glass shattered. Wood broke. Ropes snapped with the sharp sounds of a drawn bow string and one of the giant chimneys fell to the deck with a resounding crash. Crushing the people who weren’t quick enough to get out from underneath it._

_“What about Seamus? What about Regulus?” They hadn’t seen either of them since the fiasco with the life boat._

_Tom looked back at him with dark eyes. “People like me, we’re used to hardship. Hardy. They’ll be fine. My concern is you. Now come over here.”_

_He tugged him over to the railing. The same railing, some part of Harry noted, where he and Tom had had their spitting contest._

_“Should we jump?” Harry didn’t like the thought of how far that fall was._

_“No. We’re not jumping unless we have no other choice. We need to stay on this ship for as long as possible, understand?” He nodded. “Good. Come on!”_

_They resumed their flight across the upper deck. Running until they ran out of deck space._

_“There aren’t any stairs here!”_

_“Bugger stairs! I’ll help you over the railing; jump down onto that roof. I’ll be right behind you.” Tom was hauling him over the railing even as he spoke. Harry’s feet hit the roof with a clang and Tom’s followed a moment later. More people followed their example, swarming over the railing like agitated spiders. “Down again! Come on!”_

_Another jump. This one smaller than the last. They were on the deck of the stern, now, and kept running._

_The tilt of the deck was now approaching forty five degrees. Harry clung to Tom’s hand as he forged onward, grabbing hold of everything that he could reach and using it to haul them both further towards the stern. The raven looked to the right. A priest clung to a winch with one hand and bore up a chain of people with the other as he stood midway through a prayer: a prayer for the dying._

_“Watch yourself!” Tom called back to him over the sound of screaming cracking wood and grinding metal. People were sliding by. Ramming into things and each other with the awful sounds of giving flesh and breaking bone. Grabbing at everything they could in an effort to arrest their fall. “Don’t let them grab onto you, Harrison!”_

_Men. Woman. Children. Officers. Passengers. Furniture. Everything that wasn’t nailed down or fast enough to catch hold of something that was rocketed passed at an ever faster speed. Falling into the water. Being sucked down in the vortex caused by the ship._

_People throughout the ship were falling. From the upper decks. From the sides. From the stern itself just as they finally reached the peak of the ship’s tail, clambering past them over the rail and throwing themselves down into the dark waters far below. Some narrowly missed the great propellers. Others weren’t so lucky._

_Harry looked on in horror as one man slammed into the metal blades, snapping in half like a broken twig before spiraling down into the water below._

_“Grab the rail!” Tom was clinging on just behind him. Clutching with his hands. Locking his feet under the lower rungs. “Hold on as tight as you can, Harry! Don’t let go!”_

_“I won’t let go!” Fear was blurring his vision. Blood racing so quickly through his veins that he felt his head might explode. And then, just when he thought that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, all the power to the ship went out. Plunging them into pitch black._

_What Harry first mistook as more gunshots he soon realized was actually the sound of the wooden boards splintering as the deck began to snap in half._

_And then all at once they were falling._

_The stern plummeting back down into the water. All those who had jumped before them disappeared beneath the girth of the couple thousand ton ocean liner as it slammed once more against the ocean below._

_The respite of being back to a horizontal possition brought no relief and barely lasted moments. The bow hadn’t broken off completely. It was still partially attached, and its weight was dragging them back upright. Up. Up. Up. Far past where they had been before. Thirty degrees. Sixty degrees. Almost ninety. More people tumbled, their grip dislodged by the seesawing ship._

_“We have to move!” Tom clambered up an aft pole with the speed and skill of a monkey and swung himself around to the other side before he reached over to Harry. “Grab my hand and I’ll pull you over!”_

_Harry’s feet were slipping backwards. His grip wouldn’t hold out for much longer._

_“Come on, songbird! I’ll pull you over!”_

_It took effort, he could tell that much from how his muscles clenched and bunched, but between the two of them and their adrenaline they managed to get Harry up onto the railing beside him just as the stern rose to become entirely vertical._

_“What if it falls over?” people were dangling from the aft pole. From the rails. Looking like the ornaments of some macabre Christmas tree._

_“It won’t. The likelihood of that is extremely low!”_

_“I’m sure that they said the same thing about the Titanic sinking to begin with!”_

_Bodies thudded and pinged against the walls and rails of the other decks below them. Screaming as they tumbled down and away. Harry looked on unable to help as a terrified woman lost her grip and disappeared._

_With another groan the tail end of the ship began to sink. Down. Down. Rapidly picking up speed as the pressure inside of it built. Water spewing in geysers from the shattered windows and busted doors. The frothing maw of the ocean drawing closer to them with nowhere left to run._

_“This is it, Harry!” Tom pushed himself up onto all fours, anticipation evident in the set of his shoulders. “The ship will suck us down; when I tell you to, take a deep breath. The deepest that you possibly can!” The sea had consumed the railing just beneath the one which they were clinging to. The ravenous spray hitting their faces. “The minute that you’re under, head for the surface. Do not stop kicking! Do not let go of my hand!”_

_The water was close enough to touch now and had it not been so agitated Harry felt certain he could have seen their reflections in its surface. The other people who had been surrounding them had disappeared. Swallowed by the sea._

_“We’ll make it, songbird. Trust me!”_

_“I trust you!”_

_The railing that they clung to slipped below the water._

_“ **Now**!”_

_Harry sucked in air until his lungs threatened to burst, squeezing his eyes shut and latching onto Tom’s hand just seconds before the RMS Titanic dragged them down into the North Atlantic’s blue abyss._


	11. Never an Absolution

_Cold. Blue. Everywhere. The ship was sinking just beside them and the only thing that Harry could make out through the gloom of it all was Tom and the massive white letters which spelled out TITANIC as the liner plunged down and away. The pressure in his head was immense. He felt as if his eardrums would burst at any moment. His glasses were gone. Even if they hadn’t been he doubted he’d have been able to see through the cloud of silver bubbles that swarmed his face like furious bees._

_Tom’s warm hand clutched his; his only point of reassurance as the brunet’s larger form was twisted and thrown about by the vortex of the now submerged vessel. The cuff and short length of chain still around his wrist flashing through the gloaming like the silver scales of a giant fish._

_Everything was overlaid in shades of navy, as if they’d fallen into the giant diamond which had arguably been the start of all their troubles, and Harry could no longer tell which way was up and which was down._

_Tom reached up with his other hand to seize the collar of the life belt that he wore. Shaking him and then pointing. Harry could only assume that he was indicating the surface. Moments later, in a great surge caused by the sudden rotation of a propeller, the taller male was ripped from his grip. Dragged downwards. Spinning away into the encroaching black._

_He tried to scream, forgetting for a moment where he was, and water flooded into his mouth. Instantly, Harry began to drown. Left with no other choice if he wanted to live, he swam madly towards the surface. His head breaking over the churning waves just as his vision was about to go black and hacking up salt scoured lungfuls of water before finally getting his first breath of air. Looking around in hopes of seeing Tom._

_He was met instead with the sight of a sea of humanity. White life belts. Dark, saturated hair and clothing. Flailing limbs. And the screaming._

_Without his glasses there was no hope for him of identifying Tom by sight, and even if he had had perfect vision the chance of seeing his lover in this crowd would have been slim to none._

_“Tom!” Another person came up just beside him and he spun in relief only to realize that it wasn’t him. The man had no lifebelt and tried to cling to him. To drag him down. Harry flung him away and floundered out of reach. Wide eyed and gasping and still screaming for the only person he wanted, needed, to see. “Tom!”_

_The legion of pin wheeling limbs sent a haze of frigid droplets into the air around them as the ocean heaved them back and forth like a colony of man-o-war adrift, making seeing across any real distance impossible. A few people were floating absolutely still. Some face up. Some face down._

_Dead._

_Some from the impact of falling off the ship or being fallen on. Some for being dragged down by the desperate looking to use them as flotation devices of their own. Some washed up from beneath where the stern had fallen. They bobbed against Harry like floating detritus as he struggled passed but at the moment he didn’t have it in himself to care._

_“Tom!”_

_How many people were in the water? To Harry it looked like hundreds. Thousands even. Maybe even the entire ship’s worth of passengers. Had the lifeboats gone down as well? Flipped? Buckled?_

_Something grabbed him by the ankle and his immediate first thought was shark. He flailed wildly, pin wheeling his limbs in an effort to dislodge the hungry predatory, only to have a familiar arm wrap around his waist._

_“Stop, Harry! You’re going to need that energy later!” Tom! It was Tom! He was alive! Wet, bedraggled, his skin displaying the first signs of turning blue with cold, but he was alive. Harry wanted nothing more than to leap at him but restrained the urge. Knowing doing so would risk accidentally drowning them both. “Come on!” He grabbed his wrist now instead. “Swim, Harrison! We needed to get away from the main hoard before we’re pulled down like some of the rest of these poor bastards!”_

_He was exhausted, both mentally and physically, despite his terror and his muscles were beginning to seize up because of the extreme cold. Tom couldn’t possibly be any better off, and yet he was still able to swim like a predatory fish even while dragging Harry behind him like a husky would a sled._

_“Come on, love! It isn’t much further now! Just keep swimming; you’ll be out of the water in another few moments.”_

_Out of the water? How? They were in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean with nothing around for hundreds of miles. Their ship had likely reached the bottom by now and the next nearest one was hours out. Had Tom lost his mind? Was he becoming delusional? Or was he saying whatever he thought he had to in an effort to keep Harry moving._

_“Here.” Harry looked up as Tom released him and started to swim to the side. Floating directly in front of them, not even an arm’s length away, was a piece of debris large enough to fit on. A floating bit of wall crowning or broken door. “Get on it, Harry. Get on top; I’ll hold it steady.”_

_The raven didn’t need the encouragement, though the push from his hand was appreciated. With some difficulty he hauled himself up onto the door and then began to slither his stiff body further along its tilting face._

_Tom tried to follow but the wood protested with a low groan and reared upwards. Almost capsizing and narrowly avoiding throwing Harry back into the water._

_“Tom!”_

_“Just stay on there, Harry.”_

_“But Tom, you need to come up.”_

_“I can’t, love. It’ll flip.”_

_“There’s room for-.”_

_“It won’t stay afloat, songbird. Not with both of us on there.”_

_“But what will you do?” his voice was barely audible as his head hit the wood with a thunk, his body beginning to give out from its exertions made over the course of the very long night. “What will…so cold…freeze.” His lips were almost matching the color of his eyes now and a veil of frost had formed in his hair. It was concerning. Harry didn’t like it. He reached forward as Tom dropped his head onto his arms. Clinging to the debris with his upper body._

_“I’ll be fine, songbird.” He sounded equally as tired. Shaking violently. Their breath mingled in a silver cloud as he took one of Harry’s reaching hands in his own. Cold, now. The raven mewled in distress and he touched his other hand briefly to his face in reassurance. “It’ll be alright, now.”_

_They weren’t the only ones clinging to debris, but they had the largest piece and Harry was the only one fully out of the below freezing water. Nearby, grasping what looked like the hood of the grand piano, a man in an officer’s uniform tweeted his whistle and yelled in an attempt to summon the lifeboats back which Harry now realized were floating just off in the distance. To no avail._

_“They’ll come back for us, Harry. We just…have to hold on a while longer. They had to row away from the suction so that they wouldn’t get sucked down too but now-.”_

_“They aren’t coming back Tom.”_

_“You’re wrong! They are. Just hold on for me. Hold on for me, Harrison.” Even his words were like shattered ice with how hard his teeth were clattering together; broken into uneven shards left barely distinguishable. “Hold on.”_

_“You’re the one in the water. You’re in more danger than I am.”_

_“I’ll be fine.”_

_Harry closed his eyes, a bitter smile pulling at his own blue lips. “Neither of us are going to be fine, my love. But at least we won’t be apart. We’ll never be apart now. Because we’re going to-.”_

_“ **We’re not!”** He no longer had the same strength behind his shout as before but none the less Harry flinched. “Listen to me, songbird.”_

_“No, Tom, you listen to me. Better yet, just listen. Listen to the **quiet**! I may not be as worldly as you are, but I’m not stupid and I know what that means.”_

_Even the man with the whistle had fallen silent. He now floated still, hooked on the debris he’d been using to keep his head above water with the mouthpiece frozen to his lips._

_“Look at you.” Harry was having trouble doing so even as he said it. “You’re blue. Your eyes are losing their color. Your hair is white from all the ice that’s in it. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. We’re both going to die, just like all the rest of them, because they aren’t coming back.”_

_“I might die, yes, but you won’t. You could last. You could live.”_

_“I don’t want to. Not without you.”_

_“Promise me something.”_

_“Tom-.”_

_“If you love me, songbird, if you truly love me, promise me something.”_

_“Oh, Tom…” his head dropped back onto the wood. “What would you like me to promise?”_

_“That you’ll live through this. For me. For both of us. If I…that you’ll be happy. Promise me that you’ll find someone, if not fall in love again, and have the family that you deserve. Promise me that you’ll live to an old, old age and die warm in your bed. If you love me, promise me.”_

_“Too…many words. Too tired for so many words.”_

_“Then promise me you’ll never let go!”_

_“…Oh, Tom…” He murmured into his arm, closing his eyes._

_“Promise me, Harry!” The brunet shook his arm. “Promise me! Promise! Promise me, please!”_

_This went on for a while but when Harry continued to refuse to respond the brunet eventually gave up on shaking him but didn’t let go of his hand._

_“Stay awake, my love.” Tom’s voice was weak now. “You have to stay awake. Stay awake. Stay…”_

_Everything around them had gone silent and still but for the rushing of the waves and Tom’s hushed but labored breathing. Harry was too beyond himself with exhaustion and cold to notice when even that eventually stopped._

_He fell asleep, then, or lost consciousness. The next thing he registered was a distant beam of light sliding across his eyes and a shouting voice._

_“Is there anyone alive out there?” The sound of splashing oars. Of water breaking against a bow. A life boat. “Can anyone hear me?”_

_With difficulty Harry forced his frozen lashes apart and turned his head, not daring to believe his ears alone. Expecting to see nothing but dark and death. The sounds little more than the products of his dying mind. Yet there it was. Perhaps twenty yards away approaching them, soon to pass by._

_He shook the hand still clutching his with all the strength that he could muster. “Tom.” No response. “Tom, you were right! They came back!” Still nothing. Harry lifted his head and prepared to shake him again. “Tom, they-!”_

_As the beam of light slid by once again it caught in his lover’s frozen eyes. The deep blue swallowed up completely by the dull grey-silver of the ice crystals which had formed there, locking them into a blank stare. A stare which had been aimed directly at him. The last thing he’d focused on before he’d died._

_“Tom.” No. No! He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t have left him. They were supposed to either die together or survive together. They weren’t supposed to be parted. By anything. Ever!_

_There was no point in him going for the lifeboat now. Of being rescued. It was better to die here with him than to live the rest of his life without him so here was where he would stay. On that floating board. Waiting for death to come. He’d stay there and watch his last chance slip by without so much as noticing him and-._

_‘Promise me.’_

_Tom’s last wish had been for him to live. He’d died for him. Because of him. Died staring at his face after begging for him to do one simple thing. One simple thing which amounted almost to nothing in the face of all that he had done for him._

_‘Promise me, Harry.’_

_“I’ll never let go.” He pulled his hand free of his frozen grip, his tears freezing against his cheeks before they even had the chance to fall. “I’ll never let go.” He stretched his stiff body forwards, pressing his lips to the brunet’s a final time; more like stone, now, then flesh. “I’ll live my best for both of us. I promise.”_

_‘That’s all I’m asking of you songbird.’_

_The lifeboat was moving away from him now. Continuing on its futile effort to find more survivors. Leaving him behind. As much as he desperately wanted to take Tom with him, to have him buried properly in a place that he could visit, Harry knew it wasn’t possible. With a final look at his lover’s frozen face he pushed him off into the water._

_Tom’s form stood out ghostly white against the abyss as he sank down into the darkness and disappeared from sight._

_Harry followed him into the water a moment later, floundering through the cold waves and through the sea of ice and death towards the man with the whistle. Knowing it to be his only chance._

_Survive. Survive. Survive. For both of them. For Tom._

_He grabbed at the whistle, shoving it into his mouth so quickly that he almost swallowed it by accident. Blew once. Twice. Finally managed to produce a shrill trill. Then another. And then he heard it._

_“ **Come about!”** The life boat turned. The light of its search beam fell fully across his face. Blinding him as it drew closer. Then hands reached down and pulled him up out of the water. Over the side. Onto the deck. Draping a thick blanket around him and leaving him to lay there and gasp for air. Staring up at the silvered night sky. Raising a hand to a particularly bright star._

_‘I made it, Tom. I made it. And I’ll keep my promise to you, provided that you wait for me.’_

“Fifteen hundred people went into the sea on the night that the RMS Titanic sank. Of the twenty life boats floating nearby only one came back…one. They pulled a total of six people from that water, myself included. Six survivors. Fourteen hundred and ninety four died.”

He took a shuddering breath, glancing briefly at the grim faces surrounding him.

“The sound of a person drowning is indescribable. First there’s a great splashing. And then there’s a terrible silence. That sound has haunted me in my dreams almost every night since, though Tom comes to me sometimes. To keep the nightmares at bay and help me think of…kinder things.”

He blinked rapidly to clear away the threat of tears, unwilling to break down in front of all of them.

“To this day I have moments where I wonder what it might have been like if I hadn’t killed him. And make no mistake, the fault of his death lies with me. True as it may have been that only one of us could have lain on that bit of debris without it flipping over, had I just stayed on the lifeboat like he asked that person would have been Tom. He would have been rescued. We’d have met up on the Carpathia and continued to our new life in America. What would life have been like, considering that the whole Riddle family died as well? Would Tom have continued his work as an artist or would he have claimed the name and fortune of the family he never wanted in some misplaced obligation to care for me? That’s something I’ll never know, now. But it still troubles me.”

He wrung his hands.

“I never saw Pansy again, aside from a near miss encounter on the Carpathia, though I heard she never married. Something to do with a disfiguring scar on her face that she’d gotten from ‘some lunatic with a knife’. I’m not sure what ultimately happened to her. And I don’t care to know either. All that mattered was that I’d lived. That I’d reached New York. That I had a promise to keep to the one I still hold dear.”

_Rain poured down atop him as he stood on the disembarking dock, staring up at the torch bearing Statue of Liberty’s towering form. His hair dripped into his eyes. His clothing was sodden. He needed new glasses. He’d left his heart behind._

_“Can I take your name please, Sir?” he looked over at the clip-board bearing man in officer’s regalia who so kindly held out his own umbrella to him._

_“Gaunt.” He returned his gaze to the statue. “Harrison Gaunt.”_

_“Thank you.” The man moved away as quickly as he’d come, leaving the raven to his musings._

_‘I’m going to do my best, my love. I swear that to you. I’ll do as you asked of me and I’ll live as happily as I am able without you until I can see you again.’_

_Resolution made, he dismounted the dock and set out into the city streets with a goal in mind and not even a penny to his newly taken name._

“We never found anything on Tom. There’s no record of him at all.”

“There wouldn’t be now would there, Mr. Malfoy? Tom’s father’s family and their money would have seen to that much. And until now I’ve never spoken of him. Not to anyone.” The expression on his ancient face somehow managed to look both somber and bemused. “But now you know that there was a man named Tom Gaunt, and that he saved me in every way that it’s possible for someone to be saved. I don’t even have a picture of him. He exists now only in my memory…and somehow I don’t think he minds that fact too much. Being a treasure so precious that it’s never let out for fear that even the barest hint of daylight might damage it beyond repair.”

His eyes once more drifted to the portrait in the tank.

“To be honest, speaking of him…it hurts. Because of what was. And what could have been. But I’m glad that I endured it. I am old. I doubt I’ll live much longer and I’ve now ensured that Tom, and our love for each other, will not be forgotten so easily. To be remembered…that’s the best that any man could hope for.”

“Wise words, grandfather.”

“Wisdom comes with age, Albus.”

“Lucius was the last with the diamond, wasn’t he?” George asked.

“And you had his coat on, didn’t you?” Fred seconded.

“You’ve had the Heart of the Ocean all along!”

Harry smiled and shook his head. “The pockets of his coat were empty. Perhaps he put it elsewhere before he found us again. Perhaps it fell out when Tom and I were sucked under. I’m sorry, boys. But I don’t have your stone. I’d advise you to check the debris field.”

Both of the twins looked put out. “I’m afraid that we’ve already done that.”

“Check again.”

“But-.” Harry cut them off with a sharp look. “Right then, Georgie. How about we set that up for tomorrow, then?”

“Of course, Fred. I’ll have that scheduled right away.”

“I wish you both luck, and who knows. Perhaps the ocean will give up its heart.”

“Let’s hope so, mate, because we’re in trouble if it doesn’t.”

“We’re over the debris trail now?”

“We are,” Draco told him. “Why?”

Harry smiled softly in return. “Just curiosity.”

“Shall I take you back to your room now, grandfather?” Albus stepped forward and offered him his arm but the once-raven waved him off.

“No, no Albus. Thank you, but I’ll be able to manage on my own tonight. I wish to speak with Tom a bit before I go to bed, and I’d rather that be done in private.”

“Of course. Good night, Mr. Gaunt. And thank you for your assistance.”

The deck was slick with sea spray but Harry stubbornly managed to click his way across with the help of his cane and the rail. Enjoying the caress of the North Atlantic wind as he made his way towards the stern. Checking to make sure that no one was around to see him, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the giant diamond. Cradling it in his wizened palm for a moment before pressing the hard stone lightly against his lips.

“Carry this to Tom.”

The necklace hit the water with a small splash and vanished from view almost instantly. Though he couldn’t be certain, for a moment Harry felt sure he heard Tom’s laughter on the wind and smiled at the small joke between them.

It was up to the Weasleys to find it now.

“Good night, my love. It shouldn’t be much longer now before I rejoin you on Titanic.”

For now it was time to head back to his bed to curl up beneath the covers and prepare to endure another night of relived terror in the hopes his love would reach for him and take him away into the dim carriage of the luxury car or the party in third class instead.

Tom would never speak in those dreams, but he was there. And for him that was enough. That would always be enough. Taking a deep breath to prepare for the horror, Harry closed his eyes.

When he opened them again he was in a familiar gilded hallway, a doorman smiling at him and holding open the grated door into the foyer of the grand staircase. Harry was amazed as he stepped through it, looking around at the people that crowded the room. He’d never had a dream like this before. Workers and passengers. Third class and first. People that he recognized and people that he didn’t. Dumbledore stood at the base of one of the railings, eyes once more twinkling, and there before the clock grinning down at him was-.

“ **Tom!** ” The brunet seemed to have been prepared for his lunge, catching him against his chest and spinning him around before his mouth descended ravenously onto his. Applause erupted around them in a deafening chorus as Tom’s hands explored his shoulders and back and gripped his once more black hair. Tongues rolled and teeth clicked and tears pricked at his eyes. Tom’s warmth. Tom’s taste. Tom’s scent. It all felt so real. But it wasn’t. He knew that it wasn’t. It was a dream and when Tom pulled back he wouldn’t speak and-.

“Eighty four years, songbird,” Harry’s eyes went round in shock at the sound of his lover’s voice as he tilted his chin up for another softer kiss. “You’ve really kept me waiting.”


End file.
